Boom!
Countless plasma beams streaked across the void, colliding with the energy shields of the Covenant warships, which had also unleashed their own devastating volleys. The exchange of fire was relentless, turning the space above Reach into a battlefield ablaze with destruction.
Whoosh!
At the center of the Covenant fleet, the massive flagship Solemn Penance, a Syfon-class assault carrier, weathered a full broadside of lances from part of the Night Lords' fleet. Its Tantalus-pattern shield array, derived from Forerunner technology, shimmered violently under the impact but remained intact as the behemoth continued its advance.
Aboard the Solemn Penance, within the grand control chamber, sat the Prophet of Truth—one of the three High Prophets of the Covenant. Draped in deep crimson ceremonial robes, his frail, hunched form was adorned with a golden halo, while a towering, intricately patterned headdress rested atop his head.
A poor imitation.
The San'Shyuum had long sought to fashion themselves in the image of gods, believing that such attire would bring them closer to divinity. Yet, their feeble presence only served to highlight the charade—nothing more than a monkey donning a crown.
"Signal the fleet! Enter full combat readiness!"
"Attack! Attack with everything we have! No mercy! Inform Regret and Mercy immediately—the intelligence was wrong. There is another unknown civilization involved in the battle for Reach!"
Watching the pulsating energy shields ripple around the bridge's panoramic view, the Prophet of Truth's expression darkened, his frost-white beard trembling as he spoke.
"Yes, Excellency!" The Brute Honor Guard flanking him responded in unison.
"Where did this unidentified fleet come from? A force of this magnitude—why did our intelligence provide no warning?!"
A chilling thought crossed the Prophet's mind—was he being played?
Had the Prophet of Mercy colluded with the younger Prophet of Regret to sabotage him?
The more he pondered it, the greater his fury grew.
"Curse those honorless wretches! Their words are as worthless as soiled parchment!" The Prophet of Truth slammed his frail hand against the armrest of his gravity throne in rage.
He had swallowed his pride, bending to Mercy's false wisdom in hopes of securing an alliance—only for it to amount to nothing.
And Regret—had he requested nearly half of Truth's Jiralhanae legions for the assault on Earth solely to weaken his military power? Was this entire battle merely a setup to eliminate him?
Truth had plotted against Regret and Mercy, but it seemed that they, too, had been plotting against him. And even if Regret were to arrive later with reinforcements in the name of "Covenant unity," it would be all for show—by then, the "rescue mission" would have conveniently become a "retaliation campaign."
"Order the fleet into defensive formation! Open a slipspace rupture—prepare to withdraw while engaging—"
Just as the Prophet of Truth was about to issue the command, a new threat emerged.
Boom!
"Exalted Prophet, we have received a video transmission from an unknown frequency—presumably from the fleet currently engaging us. Shall we..." The High Prophet's Brute Honor Guard hesitated.
It was almost comical. The same Jiralhanae, feared by humanity as the savage "Brutes," now bowed with utmost deference before their Prophet.
Notorious for their cruelty and their love of slaughter, the Jiralhanae were deeply entrenched in their bloody tribal traditions of Doisac. Yet, after converting to the Covenant's faith, they had become some of the most fanatical followers. Unlike the Sangheili, who valued honor, independence, and questioned authority, the Brutes adhered to the Prophets' teachings with blind devotion.
In short, they were the perfect tools.
Compared to the Sangheili, who had the audacity to challenge their masters, the contrast was stark. It was no wonder the Prophets increasingly favored the Jiralhanae.
"Put it through," the Prophet of Truth waved his hand impatiently.
Beep.
The control console flickered as the transmission came through, casting a white flash before the image stabilized.
"Humans?! Impossible! How could you pests wield such power?"
The Prophet of Truth's expression twisted in shock. The figures before him were undeniably human—though their forms were… different.
"Could it be… that humans have received the gods' blessing?"
He knew the truth. From the beginning, he and the other High Prophets had known that humanity was the rightful inheritor of the Forerunners' legacy. They had concealed this truth, ensuring it never reached the Covenant masses.
But now… seeing these humans, so vastly transformed… there was only one possible explanation.
They had unlocked the Forerunners' relics. They had begun to claim their inheritance.
"Damn it! The gods' blessings belong to us!" The Prophet of Truth trembled with rage. "Blasphemers! You have desecrated the sacred artifacts! You have defiled our holy pilgrimage!"
The Night Lords' commander, his face twisting in mild irritation, sneered.
"Noisy wretch."
"Pilgrimage? Pursuing the will of the gods? You dare? The God-Emperor's blessings are not meant for xeno filth like you!"
"Foolish creatures! Do you think hiding within your fragile shell will save you? Do you believe you can escape your annihilation? Use whatever shriveled excuse for a brain you possess to understand this—you cannot. Your worlds will burn!"
"Remember this: your destruction is the will of the God-Emperor. We are merely the hand that enacts it."
Bzzzt—
Without another word, the Night Lords' commander cut the transmission, leaving the Covenant officers stunned into silence.
"Exalted Prophet… we…" one of the Brute Honor Guards hesitantly spoke.
"Retreat…"
His hands clenched the armrests of his gravity throne, his withered fingers digging deep into the material. His voice came as a hoarse, guttural growl—rage barely contained.
"Retreat!"
"Activate slipspace drives! Open an escape corridor! Now!"
...
"They've come this far. Let's finish this. None shall escape."
Standing upon the prow of Nightfall, Konrad Curze raised the crystalline artifact bestowed upon him by the Divine Empress
The dark-toned crystalline artifact in Konrad Curze's grasp began to pulsate, its six faces shifting in eerie synchrony. A deep violet-red glow flickered across its surface, matching the starlight around them, as if bending reality itself to its rhythm.
High-energy corruption particles coalesced into concentric rings of violet-red radiance, expanding outward from Curze at an accelerating pace.
"With this, reality bends to my will—Seal!"
The pulsating glow intensified. The void shattered.
Like a vast spiderweb of light ripping through space, the rupture expanded exponentially, enveloping all of Reach—no, the entire Epsilon Eridani system itself.
VMMM—!
As the spatial disruption field activated, the partially opened slipspace portal of the Solemn Penance—the Prophet of Truth's flagship—violently collapsed.
In that instant, not just the Covenant fleet, but also the UNSC naval forces in Reach's orbit, found themselves trapped. Faster-than-light travel had been severed. All external communications were cut off.
The Prophet of Truth finally understood. It had been the Night Lords who attacked his Jiralhanae forces deep in Covenant space.
"Glory to the God-Emperor! She watches over us! Night Lords—attack!"
Curze's decree signaled the escalation of battle into a new, merciless crescendo.
A storm of destruction erupted. A relentless barrage of ruinous lances, thermal melta beams, plasma rays, and macrocannon rounds spewed forth from the Night Lords' fleet. The previously darkened void became a canvas painted in the violent hues of war.
Simultaneously, the Covenant fleet—now realizing escape was impossible—launched a full counterattack. Under the Prophet's orders, the Jiralhanae howled in battle fervor.
Forerunner-derived weaponry—Infenus-pattern super-heavy purification lances, Urpeon-pattern super-heavy plasma spears, Luxor-pattern heavy plasma beams, Ferriel-pattern pulse lasers—all fired in unison at the Night Lords' advancing warships.
The two fleets surged toward each other, exchanging devastating volleys. Plasma torpedoes and energy beams ignited in rapid succession, overlapping in a dense sequence of detonations. Expanding spheres of fiery destruction illuminated the combat zone, each successive explosion amplifying the last.
Shield systems overloaded under concentrated fire, ships torn asunder, their fragmented hulls consumed by further explosions—another fleeting burst of light against the void.
Covenant warships suffered catastrophic damage. Explosions burst across their hulls, while transport ships, assault craft, and fighters were incinerated, reduced to nothing but drifting debris.
And yet, the Night Lords' fleet was still arriving.
At the exit point of the hyperspace corridor, battlecruisers and capital ships continued to emerge. With every passing moment, the Covenant's suffering escalated.
The only limiting factor? The narrow passage of the light cruiser that had first deployed the portal beacon. The colossal flagship Nightfall occupied more than half the transit aperture, forcing other warships to emerge piecemeal around its massive form.
The Imperial Navy's heavy battleship formations had yet to fully arrive.
But with Curze now actively expanding the rift using the crystalline artifact, the reality breach widened further.
And at last—
The Imperial Navy's battleship divisions and dreadnought formations began to enter the battlefield.
BOOM!
Their arrival was heralded by countless explosions, drawing the eyes of every fleet in the battlefield. For the Covenant navy, each detonation marked the destruction of another warship—yet there was nothing they could do but watch as their comrades were obliterated one by one.
They were completely surrounded.
In the realm of space warfare, for an entire fleet to be encircled meant only one thing—the sheer scale of the opposing navy was beyond comprehension.
BOOM—!
The largest space battle in history had turned this sector into a spectacle of annihilation.
Caught between the Night Lords' fleet and the Covenant armada, Reach's orbital defense platforms blared emergency sirens, their alarms echoing in deafening waves. The dazzling radiance of the ongoing battle was so intense that some personnel were forced to shut their eyes.
It was mesmerizingly beautiful—but to the soldiers of the UNSC, it was the final light before death's embrace. Everything in its path would be reduced to burning cinders.
And then came the true nightmare.
A behemoth among warships—estimated to be over 300 kilometers in length—advanced toward Reach, its sheer mass rivaling celestial bodies.
Unlike the others, this titanic vessel had not engaged the Covenant fleet.
Instead, it moved unchallenged, unrelenting, toward Reach itself.
"Prepare for engagement!"
Within the orbital defense platform, the commanding officer clenched his fists, his voice filled with desperate resolve. Watching the Night Lords' armada pour into near-orbit, he had already embraced the certainty of death.
...
On Reach's surface...
The once-bustling cities had long lost their former liveliness. Civilians screamed as they fled toward evacuation shelters, while UNSC troops scrambled to fortify key positions, erecting one last line of permanent defensive structures.
"Soldiers! We will fight for Reach until the bitter end!"
"We shall battle in the skies, upon the seas, at the landing zones, in the fields and streets, in the mountains! We shall never surrender!"
"We will protect her at all costs—even if it means our deaths! Reach will be our tomb—but we will never bow!"
A UNSC officer stood atop the steps, helmet cast aside, roaring his defiant cry to his men.
Above them, the massive silhouette of Nightfall loomed, its accompanying fleet blotting out the sky like an unrelenting storm front.
Even without their highest-ranking admiral, even in the face of utter despair, UNSC officers had enacted the planet's emergency invasion protocols.
They were ready to die.
...
Within the UNSC Headquarters on Reach, the battle had not ceased.
With Admiral Parangosky dead, chaos had spread like wildfire within the base. The internal mutiny, combined with the external invasion, had completely crippled the UNSC's chain of command on Reach.
No matter how well-trained the ground forces were, no matter how much the officers tried to salvage the situation, their central command had already collapsed.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
From the ruins of a collapsed structure, the sound of heavy armor echoed through the debris.
"It's a shame—I thought we were friends."
"We are friends. But now, we are enemies."
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