On the planet Kharuun, there exists a highland desert megalopolis – a city born from the ashes of Armageddon. Within this city, three factions – one of drowning purity, crushing order, one of burning rebellion and smoldering chaos, and another of bureaucratic geometry, and labyrinthine control.

Veyraxxis

Veyraxxis stands atop a massive desert plateau at the base of a snow-capped volcano. From a distance, the city appears like a layered crown of stone, its districts built in tiers that rise gradually toward the mountain’s shadow. The climate around it is dry and harsh, with sharp contrasts between the burning sands below and the icy winds that sweep down the volcano’s frosty slopes. The plateau itself was once a fractured wasteland left by the old world’s collapse, but the three great powers – the Cirrhen, the Pyreth, and the Veyrahn – rebuilt it into a living megalopolis.

There are three factions in Veyraxxis.

The Order of The Vein,
The Mantle of Mendgata,
And The Median Dominion,

The Order of The Vein

The volcano’s geothermal energy warms Veyraxxis’ low elevation slopes, melting snow, and producing a rich run that flows in through the first and outermost district of Veyraxxis. This is Cirrhen territory, home to The Order of The Vein. Here, the run off is converted into deep canals topped with a thin layer of algae concealing numerous lifeforms, some harmless, others exceedingly dangerous. The canal’s width is connected by short, narrow stone-arch bridges wrapped in thick layers of vines and seaweed. Cirrhen architecture is simplistic, but effective in its design function: sand-stone cubicles, cylindrical monoliths, and steep staircases run through the labyrinthine sprawl, forming a complex stack of.

The Cirrhen themselves are of an odd genetic make-up, appearing more like autonomous beasts crafted from scaled wood, and gray stone, roughly eight feet long and three feet tall, remaining constantly hunched over, teal eyes bulging like a curious lemur, yet lacking anything denoting wonder. Their fingertips are vacuous, their snouts long and protruding like an armadillo, and large rodent ears constantly perked up as if listening for anything unusual. Every Cirrhen's has a long, segmented tail that ends in a vacuous tip with four cuts that allow it to open up like a small claw.

At the center of Cirrhen territory stands a colossal statue of bark and stone. Its mouth is split into four mandibles, its shoulders sprout clawing branches that fan out like the wings of a great dragon. Its eyes glow with deep azure water, its fingers release thick cascades, giving life to the Cirrhen’s but also a paralyzing stillness that sits stagnant beneath its four quadrapod trunks. This is Thalyth, divine representative of The Order of The Vein. The Order of The Vein believes in stillness of existence, stillness of thought, stillness of culture: everything flows down the same path, never changing, always remaining the same. Evolution and progress are threats to the purity of the spirit that flows throughout Veyraxxis’ canals, thus in order to maintain harmony, the Cirrhen utilize a form of psychic elemental surveillance system.

When other Cirrhen's step out of line, when the sacred order is breached, the water within the canals begins to bubble and seethe. Within these bubbles, light is bent into the image of the non-conformists, of those who would seek to rebel against the peace Thalyth brings. In response to these disturbances, the creatures of the deep start to emerge in a viciously agitated state. Stabbing these images with their tails, and drinking in their essence, the size of the average Cirrhen nearly quintuples. Now they are able to psychically track the apostate as a terrifying pack of abominations made ugly by the imbibing of impurity. Tombstone teeth sprout from their mouths, twisted demon horns sprout in unpredictable directions, claws capable of bisecting pillars burst from their fingertips, and their tails spray a scalding mix of superhot sludge that corrodes dissolves the soul, reducing it to all intents and purposes down to nothing.

The Mantle of Mendgata

Deep inside the mountain, magma rivers flow inward through and beneath Veyraxxis, far below the detection of Cirrhen's probing psychic senses. As the borders of the first district ends, the canals begin to boil and froth with subterranean heat, stone and sand emanate smoke, water evaporates into scalding steam, and buildings melt into drooping glass until all finally succumbs to the sharp, metallic bang of steel striking anvils, the sound getting louder and louder until the source is revealed.

A vast lake of lava stretches for hundreds of kilometers, its bubbling mass punctured through and claimed by thousands of black iron, emerald-windowed citadels, each connected by a labyrinthine sprawl of colossal steel bridges and cobblestone roads. Each citadel functions as its own weapons foundry, forge, and training ground for the Pyreth. Once upon an eon, the Pyreth were of the same species as the Cirrhen: cold, rigid, and deluded by notions of rigid order that flowed nowhere, led to nothing, and only served to preserve an immaculately sterile form of beauty. The Pyreth rejected these ideals, and in a violent act of rebellion broke free, fighting their way deeper into the city, and in so doing, formed a connection with the worm that lives inside the volcano.

Igvarlith

Igvarlith is a worm of chaos. He swims through molten channels, sheathed in a hard, segmented shell of heat-resistant rock, preserving his form, not for contradiction of what he represents, but for preservation of what his existence symbolizes. To channel the unlit fire waiting to be ignited in the cavern of one’s heart, so that the untapped recesses of the soul can be illuminated and thus navigated with clarity and purpose. In the case of the Pyreth, their stone scales harden into black, red-tinted armor, the wood of their once photosynthetic flesh disintegrates, and dissolves, reforming into wet, slimy orange flesh, piercing and emerging from the armor in real-time evolution and adaptation of their new forms.

The Pyreth stand at roughly the same height as their Cirrhenian ancestors, though many can vary by several feet in accordance with the degree of individuation and self-actualization that has been achieved. Their skulls are an elongated, multi-noduled crown that prongs out in six directions, ending in twin-sickle bones of a prehensile nature. Deep-set eye sockets feature a quad-set of four, scleraless eyes reflecting the ember of the forge, their noses lack nostrils and and instead contain a similar number of extendible feelers, and their mouths droop down into four mobile tusks that lead into a long sucking mouth. Possessing a relatively humanoid torso, the similarities cease immediately, for they possess six arms, two at the shoulders, two above their hips, and a middle pair at their torsos, all devoted to combat and arms forging. In order to support such massive bulk, the Pyreth stand upon four legs spread apart in a quad-pattern, their feet that are rigid and stiff, branching out in four directions that adds to their stability.

The center of the Mantle of Mendgata features a colossal effigy of Igvarlith flanked by two spiraling bands of ivory steel lined with stairways that lead up to the mouth from which Igvarlith vomits lava, constantly replenishing the growing lake. Within the lake itself swim Igavrlith’s children – worms who bear a much closer resemblance to their father than to the denizens who worship him. The worms themselves, like the lava is not truly dangerous to the Pyreth who are born of fire and earth, but it is a danger to those who lack control over their emotions: uncontrolled rage in particular draws the Children of Igvarlith in like maggots to a festering wound, ravenously devouring and puking out hideous, mutated versions of any who they manage to consume, proving that even the most noble rebellions can easily turn south, turning a freedom fighter into a slave to his own wrath, and a sovereign into a thrall of the flame.

The Median Dominion

The Median dominion is a dark, stormlit district of blackstone, gray obelisks, and angular pyramids arranged into a brutalist architecture that is unyielding, monolithic, and precise in its unmoving presence. The sky appears as if locked in a perpetually rumbling storm, not quite fully gathered, but always seconds away from unleashing a calamitous downpour that will drown all of creation beneath its world-ending flood. It is precisely due to that fact, however, that it never rains upon the dominion, who are forever walking the line between carefully calculated bureaucratic control and unleashing lethally coordinated, all out assault on the Cirrhen and Pyreth, whose perpetually ending conflicts threaten to thrust Veyraxxis into its second apocalypse.

At ground level, streams of molten rock and flowing water pass through the dominion in perfect containment, sealed beneath a thick layer of transparent hardlight, its photon-bending properties projecting the illusion of a power-grid. In reality is Veyhran drinking in the never-ending conflict transpiring between the Cirrhen and the Pyreth, self-conspiring a hundred thousand different ways to suppress and put an end to the mayhem.

At the apex of the city stands the a sentinel statue, an obsidian tower whose peak pierces the smog-veiled heavens. There sits Veyhran, the Tri-Winged Arbiter, a godlike being with the head of a toucan. A crown of fleshy tendrils unfurls from its skull, swaying as it projects orders out onto its many servants. Its three pairs of batlike wings stretch and fold in slow rhythm, each beat stirring the city’s winds in a controlled pattern, churning the storm in contemplation of its next move. Its four clawed limbs grip the obelisk’s surface, and a serpentine tail coils down the spire, pulsing faintly with blue light.

The denizens of the Dominion are neither zealots nor warriors, but manipulators of Pyreth and Cirrhen activity. They act unseen, ensuring the two powers never stir enough carnage to destabilize Veyraxxis. Through propaganda, subterfuge, and assassination, they maintain equilibrium. Anatomically they resemble smaller versions of Veyhran, faces concealed by dark alloys engraved with constantly flowing, rippling ink, and a twinkle of foul starlight, as though their internal cosmos was a thing suggested, and never certain. In other words, they are shape-shifters. Their society operates on information, influence, and invisible control,

The Median Dominion is not peace—it is containment. It thrives on the tension between fire and water between impulse and restraint. Its technology surpasses all other districts–black magic monitors located inside the many obelisks displaying heavily encrypted information that is interpreted by their form-changing masks. The citizens believe that only by perpetual vigilance and hidden correction can the world of Kharuun survive its own divinity. Thus, beneath the silent gaze of Veyhran, the Dominion watches, manipulates, and endures—the unseen spine of Veyraxxis, forever ensuring that no god’s passion becomes the city’s extinction.

In times long forgotten, at the end of an era, in a place where dreams lived and died, a beast had its mind corrupted, brainwashed into believing itself something that it was not. Trapped in that illusion, the beast encountered another beast - a dragon of shadow tinted platinum steel, of quantum pain born of an unintegrated identity, forced to suffer for the sins of its progenitor. Manipulated into trying to kill each other, the two beings fought tooth and nail, claw and saw, lightning and metal, until at last, when it was too late, their wounds bled together, allowing crimson machines to swim through rivers of acidic blood.

Darkly united, the two became one, and through strange scheming on the part of a divine renegade, the beast of myth, monster of life, and offspring of death escaped the red river and fled to dunes of scorching sand. Upon that world, the triumvirate amalgam experienced the resurrection of bonds that were not his own, and for the first time, the third component of the Raging Singularity felt its soul nearly come undone as it witnessed his once foe’s body unravel – separating into two, which in turn formed the second piece of the spiritual trinity. Shocked, paralyzed, and scared of what the revelation meant, the fragile drake took aim at redemption’s heart, and tried to destroy it like a crying wolf biting at its own pack.

Fortunately, he had a guardian angel watching over him from afar. Or was it a demon? He wasn’t entirely sure which, but its voice had a commanding presence that allowed him to rescue himself from the jaws of damnation.

The enemy within had been defeated, and through that victory, the shackles of a new cosmos became the embracing arms of a new bond, one that warmed the darkness of space by lighting a fire that would sustain their travel across time, and brought forth a heat that would allow them to shine bright through the starlit wilds of a new universe.

–

On wings draconic wings of palladium metal, propelled onward by cones of yellow plasma spewing from their claws, as well as the soles of his feet, the thirty-eight foot creature of shadow-tinted, platinum scales rocketed through the void, horns parting space-dust as he moved through a burgundy nebula. Somewhere, hidden in this plume of stellar destruction, he could feel it - the call of disharmony, of disunity, a neverending conflict of stone and riverweed, flesh and flame, cloud and cold. The scars of the dead filled Taluge’s chest with the sensation of lungs being crushed beneath a monolithic boulder reminiscent of how Zucroas, Aludon, and Tage’s souls had been pressed together to form him. He felt the burning heat of molten rock flowing through his veins, of anvils bearing a myriad of weapons being hammered into shape, reminding him of the aptosite - Braiker who had tried to trap the first component within his Forge Ring as a test of fortitude. The last feeling…cold, observant, pathologically ruthless in its willingness to plot any conspiracy, enact any subterfuge, all for the sake of peace and stability, yet never doing anything to progress their existence beyond the apocalypse they had managed to rebuild themselves out of.

The right, sapphire eye saw rebirth without growth.

The left, crimson eye saw ice that preserved death.

He wasn’t sure why these sensations bothered him so much. His primitive brain processed it as a stagnant ecosystem, non-threatening, yet the more his higher cognition received and interpreted the whole of their society, the more the existential ley-lines seemed to divide like maroon hair follicles. The longer he allowed himself to remain exposed to their opposing values, and more he began to feel pulled in multiple directions, but where such mixed signals would have provoked defensive aggression in the actions of a less intelligent monster, in Taluge it produced curiosity, and a need to witness his reflection.

And so the journey continued with a massive power boost that turned his plasma emissions red, accelerating him toward the source of his confusion.

–

The star-spangled blur of hyperspace travel brought to bear the visual stimuli of silverfins, carps, and mackerels stretched as far as the eyes could comprehend their streaking fins and sparkling scales. Although the sight brought a feeling of calm to the beast, ultimately it was nothing new, nothing novel, just another layer of existence presenting itself as it was meant to be - a stark contrast to the clash of faiths and dogma he could feel bubbling up within the scars of the dead - the jagged, dark-green scars running from his upper forelimb to the inside of the forearm just before the start of his wrists.

Within their astral depths, he could see the sky starting to churn…

Exiting out of hyperspace, Taluge emerged within the Kharuun system's oort cloud, red plasma sabers protruding from his ulna. He did not slash at the glistening ice the way a warrior might swing a sword at falling debris; rather, he let gravity and momentum guide him through the field, bisecting chunks of ice in stroking passes that left evaporating steam, and frozen mist floating in his wake. He did the same to the kuiper belt that followed, splitting rocks into smoldering debris, melting the ice that was buried within and kicking them out of his way to form new comets that would one day contribute to the formation of another system's ocean.

The longer he did this, the more he cut down, the more chill he spread, the more his mind began to resonate with the rigid flow of water. Never deviating from its path, never overflowing, forever predictable in what larger body it dumped its contents in. For all the life it supported within the canals, its stagnant spirit choked the vibrancy of his individualities, the aspects of who Taluge was that made him what he was. As he got closer, and the star gradually warmed him, he could feel the heat filling his urge to resist the oppression, to roar loudly as his heart pounded against his chest with every determined strike against the anvil, shaping his will into something strong, unique, and determined.

Lastly, as the planet came into view, a deeper, more advanced part of his mind that felt less and assessed more, charted grids over roots, navigated circuits over vines, surveilled with monitors and not eyes, plotted in the shadows, killed in the corridors and hallways, spread lies and propaganda, not to confuse, disorient, or deceive…but to control… He saw the world, not for what it was, but for what it presented.

What it presented was an opportunity to know one's different selves.

And then it happened just as he took the plunge into Kharuun's atmosphere.

–

In the morning hours of a predawn astral sky, a three sided star overlooked a lake that was frozen solid. Contained beneath the glaze of snow and ice were tiny clumps of crimson dirt interspersed throughout the millions of tiny cracks perforating the mindscape's substructure.

Gazing upon the frigid landscape, the first face of the star, bright as a sunny, afternoon sky assaulted the land with thundering bolts of lightning, striking at the stillness, electrifying its contents and setting its internal world into motion by tearing fissures across its surface. The second face of the star rotated into view, red as lava and hotter than the blood of fighters and lovers alike smothered the land in its outpouring of coronal mass, splashing, melting through, and annihilating the container into a massive domain of unnavigable steam. Lastly, came the star's final face, a bloom of shadowy gray, that released nothing of substance, expressed no emotion, and like any good operating system, released little more than a thick soundbyte of heavy bass mixed with electronic chirping.

All of this culminated in the ascension of a colossal spire built from the released clumps stacking on top of one another, forming a hooked spear tip that snagged the star at the point of high noon. Storm, fire, and sound, as well as all things visually and audibly related channeled upward through the spire, now a spire of desire, shot up through the celestial body's core and triggered a tremendous fission event.

As the star split apart, amber gel bubbled through the skein of ether, stretched out into gooey strands of caramelizing ribonucleic beams, preventing the body that had divided into three from drifting too far apart, whilst also allowing their physical forms to retain the traits that brought them together. Three draconic bots flew up through the clouds, their tricloptic eyes of crimson, sapphire, and scarlet projected white light beams to monitor and survey the construct’s state in a perpetual state of endless observation through constant orbiting - a microcosm of a trinary system.

At the east and western points of this astral soulscape, jagged rifts of crimson east and sapphire west began tugging vacuously on the air of this world, inhaling the refreshing air of change and progress directly into Taluge's physical body.

–

The scars of the dead flashed like alarm klaxons on the platinum scales of the Raging Singularity, signifying the end of loneliness and the beginning of togetherness.

It began with a sudden self-shearing of platinum armor, slicing and whistling through the atmosphere as friction-induced fire spread across the beast like an apocalyptic descent back into Hell. A storm of shadow-tinted shrapnel consequently consumed the falling meteor he had become, synthetic, off-white muscle fibers barely visible as the blinding yellow heat that surrounded him came off like a bestial supersuit, reassembling itself into a twenty-four foot tall, bipedal cyborg. Serrated eyelids blinked over scarlet eyes, forty-eight foot wings emitting plasma thrust along with the soles of his feet kept him aloft, horns trailing crimson dust in preparation for what might come as a consequence of entering a world that did not belong to them.

From above Tage watched Alucroas plummet toward the surface, feeling him physically through the existential ley-lines and spiritually through the black scars of the dead on his arms. His long, black, quadrupedal body descended at a breakneck speed, a seam ripping itself open along his backside, revealing black muscles flowing with acidic green blood that was caustic enough to melt through steel in a matter of seconds. Inside the beast's mouth, a draconic skull connected to a tongue appendage swung wildly to and fro, roaring with primal excitement as the forelimbs of the abomination suddenly flexed inward, widening the seam and causing the whole layer of scaly epidermis to come off like a commando destroying his own armor. This was followed by Alucroas’ lower jaw splitting open, causing the head and neck appendage drop down, the frenulum dissolving away as the rest of the dual-organ and muscular systems comprising the beast deweaved their cells at the molecular level, causing tons of bleeding that would have, and very likely did startle the denizens of this world upon it hitting the ground.

At the torso, two rib cages experienced a sudden calcium dissolution, sliding free at vertical angles. Joint tendons snapped and reattached themselves at the proper points, horns dissolving away until little more than small, pointed nubs were left on a crimson-eyed beast with a squarish jaw that tapered off into a sharp point, dark-green scars marking its arms. Aludon instantly streamlined his twelve foot body and commenced diving toward a series of river canals running through a city district of stone, wood, and water, his curiosity instantly peaking, whereas before he would have done everything possible to stay near his original brother, Zucroas. This time, he made it a point to veer his body toward what appeared to be a strange blend of stone and plant matter compressed into the leaning frame of something resembling a cross between a pangolin and an armadillo. Off in the distance, a massive wooden statue with quad-legs, frills growing out of its neck, shoulders, and elbows, and pouring cascades from its mouth and fingertips stood still and reliable, its lime-colored eyes glowing with a life that betrayed its function.

The first of the three, leader of the pack, Zucroas missiled through the clouds, his once black, massively scaled skin, a result of being merged with Aludon, sealed itself closed around his back. Rapidly, through a process of cell-shedding and photonic wavelength manipulation triggered a pigmentary shift that shrunk the scales down to near invisibility, rendering him white as snow. Neck and bone muscle dissolved away in cautious increments, gradually removing the giraffe like look he possessed, twenty-foot wings gliding him along the heated air currents of a gargantuan hellscape of molten factories, boundaries, and creatures resembling humanoid worms hammering away at anvils. At its center, twin bands of black iron staircases encircled a titanic worm made of the same substance, its mouth open wide as molten rock vomited from its mouth.

As for Tage, his cold, cybernetic mind was drawn toward the dark-blue clouds, where an electrical storm softly rumbled. Below it, a network of obsidian and black metal, gridded with conduits of lava and water flowed between a network of flat-topped pyramids and enormous obelisk. At its center stood a colossal effigy of what he could only assume to be a god. It was skinny, masked, and avian, featuring six wings, and bore an uncanny resemblance to a demonic toucan. Somewhere within the bowels of this maddening cityscape machiavellian moves were being made, and Tage was quickly becoming cognizant of the opacity of their schemes. Deciphering this world's nature would not be easy, but he didn't care: his priority, his purpose was to his brothers.

So it was that Aludon recklessly crashed against a roof, slid off it, knocked over a caravan, and managed to skewer himself on several street poles before tumbling into the river like the reckless fool he was. Zucroas dove cleanly into one of the smaller lava pools, his heat-immune body letting him survive and see quite clearly in the molten abyss, and Tage, unsure of where to land, settled on hovering around for the time being, waiting for his moment of necessity.