The sky changed color.
It wasn't dramatic at first just a thin smear of violet bleeding across the clouds like ink dropped into water. Mira was the first to notice it from the observatory steps.
"Uh… does the sky usually do that?" she asked.
Luna looked up. "No."
Nyra's bracelet vibrated sharply. "Energy surge detected. Not terrestrial."
Riven straightened. "Where?"
Nyra closed her eyes, fingers brushing the glowing band on her wrist. "Two kilometers east. Urban area."
Ava swallowed. "You mean… people."
Before anyone could argue, a low sound rolled through the air like metal screaming underwater.
Then the explosion came.
A column of purple light stabbed into the city district below them.
Glass shattered. Car alarms screamed.
Riven was already moving. "Transform. Now."
Seven bracelets ignited.
Alien light wrapped around their bodies, reshaping skin and bone into forms that barely looked human anymore.
They ran.
Not in formation. Not clean.
They ran like frightened gods.
They reached the district in under a minute.
What used to be a bus terminal was now a crater of warped asphalt and melted steel. The ground pulsed like it was breathing.
At the center of it stood something tall and wrong.
It looked almost humanoid long limbs, jagged plating, its body stitched together from floating shards of black metal orbiting a glowing purple core.
Its head was a split oval of light, with no eyes.
Only a voice.
"Signal… located," it said.
Its words echoed inside their skulls instead of through the air.
Mira felt sick. "It's talking… in my head."
Nyra's eyes narrowed. "It's tracking our GeneShift signatures."
A car suddenly lifted off the ground beside the creature.
It crushed it into a sphere of metal with one twitch of its hand.
Ava whispered, "That's not training."
Riven stepped forward. "Spread out. Luna, civilians. Mira, suppress fire. Ava…"
The creature turned toward them.
"Hosts confirmed."
Then it moved.
It didn't run.
It blinked across space.
In one instant it stood twenty meters away.
In the next, it was in front of Riven.
It struck.
Riven barely blocked, sliding backward across the pavement as the shockwave cracked the street beneath her boots.
"Too fast!" Luna shouted.
Mira fired a blast of golden light. It hit the creature's shoulder and did nothing.
The metal shards rotated, absorbing the impact.
"Structure adapting," Nyra said. "It's learning."
Ava leapt in from the side, her crystalline arm slicing into its core.
The blade passed through empty light.
"Not solid!" Ava cried.
The creature backhanded her.
She flew through a store window in a spray of glass.
"Ava!" Mira screamed.
Riven snarled and slammed both fists into the creature's chest.
Its core flickered.
For a moment, the shards lost formation.
"Now!" Riven yelled.
Luna darted past them, pulling a screaming man out from behind a collapsed bus.
Nyra raised both hands.
Her eyes glowed gold.
The creature froze mid-motion as invisible force wrapped around it.
"I can't hold it long!" Nyra shouted. "It's pushing back!"
The thing's voice deepened.
"Correction. Host resistance… irrelevant."
Purple light exploded outward.
Nyra slammed into a wall.
Riven was thrown to one knee.
Mira's blast went wild, tearing through a streetlamp.
Ava staggered back from the ruined shop, blood running down her forehead.
"This thing doesn't feel pain," Ava said. "It doesn't get tired."
Riven stared at the creature.
Then she saw it.
The core.
Not glowing.
Flickering.
"Hit the center," Riven said. "All of us. At once."
"You said spread out," Mira said.
"I'm changing my mind."
They formed a rough line.
Seven powers aligned.
The creature raised both arms.
The air screamed.
"On my mark," Riven said.
The core brightened.
"Now!"
Light collided with light.
Blue. Gold. Silver. Black. Violet.
The impact cracked the street in half.
The creature's core shattered.
Its metal shards fell to the ground like dead birds.
The voice cut off mid-word.
Silence dropped over the district.
Smoke drifted through the broken street.
Mira fell to her knees. "Did… did we kill it?"
Nyra approached the remains carefully.
"It's not dead," she said. "It's… deactivated."
Ava looked at the cratered buildings. "That was one."
Riven stared at the sky, still stained violet.
"That was a scout," she said.
Luna looked at her. "How do you know?"
"Because if that thing was sent to find us," Riven said, "something bigger sent it."
The bracelets pulsed faintly.
In the distance, sirens began to rise.
Mira whispered, "So this is it."
Riven clenched her fists.
"This is the war."
And somewhere far beyond the clouds, something else felt the signal go dark.
And noticed Earth.