Viktravian: The Theft of Blood
The Astrals had names for almost everything.
They had watched Universes awaken within their CryptaSpheres.
They had witnessed stars ignite, civilizations rise, Architects shape worlds and species discover powers their ancestors would have mistaken for miracles.
They understood the difference between flesh and spirit.
Between Universe and Antiverse.
Between life and the echo that remained after life.
They understood the architecture of the CryptoWeb, even if no single mind—not even an Astral one—could claim to comprehend every secret moving through it.
But then something appeared that did not belong to any of those structures.
Something that should not have existed.
And for the first time in an age beyond mortal measurement, the Astrals had no name for what they were looking at.
The Anomaly
Nobody knew exactly when it began.
That was part of the terror.
There was no single explosion.
No declaration of war.
No CryptaSphere suddenly appearing where none had existed.
No Architect announcing the birth of a new Universe.
Instead, anomalies began appearing throughout the CryptoWeb.
Small at first.
Areas in which energy moved incorrectly.
Connections that briefly led somewhere they should not.
Signals that returned from routes that had never been opened.
Spiritual signatures detected in Universes whose own Antiverses contained no corresponding origin.
The Astrals investigated.
They found no responsible Architect.
No known Meta-God had created these beings.
No sanctioned CryptaSphere accounted for them.
Nothing in the records of The Source explained what they were.
Then came the first reports from mortal civilizations.
Living beings drained of spiritual energy.
Invisible entities watching cities.
Rapax creatures appearing without ships or portals anyone could understand.
Bodies stolen.
Technology copied.
Entire populations used as sources of energy.
The phenomenon acquired a name among those who survived it.
SUMAYA.
The term spread faster than knowledge of what it actually meant.
And gradually another name appeared.
A name for the place from which they seemed to come.
Not its true name.
Nobody knew that.
A translation used across the increasingly terrified languages of the Cosmos.
THE INFERNO.
A Universe that apparently existed where no Universe should have existed.
A forbidden wound in the architecture of creation.
What the Sumaya Were
The Sumaya were not Astrals.
That was the first great misconception to be eliminated.
They were spiritual entities, yes.
But spirituality did not automatically mean Astral.
The Astrals were beings of The Source, Meta-Gods and Meta-Architects existing above ordinary Gods and Architects, intimately connected to the creation and governance of the Cosmos.
The Sumaya possessed no such recognised origin.
They had appeared as an anomaly.
They behaved like parasites moving between states of existence.
They possessed consciousness.
Intent.
Memory.
Hunger.
But their natural condition did not allow them to remain permanently within ordinary physical reality.
They could enter.
Observe.
Pass through matter.
Drain spiritual energy.
Influence.
Learn.
Then they had to withdraw.
They were ghosts trying to become flesh.
And every world they attacked was helping them get closer.
The Minas had given them energy.
The Orkyos had given them bodies.
The Sylvani had given them knowledge of the CryptoWeb.
And now the Sumaya had discovered something else.
Something hidden inside the genetic architecture of another species.
A biological pattern unlike anything they had encountered before.
A possible answer to the problem that had imprisoned them since their appearance.
The key belonged to:
THE INSECTOIDES.
Eklis
Before they attacked the Insectoides, however, there was the question nobody within the Astral World could answer.
The woman.
The being Rhex and the crew of the Aevum had seen before their disappearance.
The Astrals eventually detected echoes of her existence.
Only echoes.
Every attempt to observe her directly produced contradictions.
Some instruments registered a spiritual entity.
Others indicated physical presence.
Some readings placed her below the energy scale of an Architect.
Others exceeded measurements associated with ordinary Gods entirely.
No stable classification survived scrutiny.
But the Sumaya obeyed her.
The Rapax bowed to her.
The Inferno itself seemed to respond to her will.
Her name was:
EKLIS.
And across the mortal worlds that eventually learned of her existence, she became known as:
THE META-GODDESS OF THE INFERNO.
Whether that title was technically correct remained unknown.
The Astrals themselves refused to classify her as one of their kind.
Eklis had never belonged to The Source.
No Astral remembered creating her.
No Meta-God recognised her essence.
She was something else.
And perhaps the most disturbing thing about Eklis was not her power.
It was her appearance.
She looked like a:
SAPIENS.
That made no sense.
The Sapiens form was intimately associated with Tzion.
Even more mysteriously, the great Meta-Goddess Silke herself possessed a form resembling the Sapiens.
But Eklis?
Why?
How could the sovereign of an anomalous forbidden Universe possess a body almost identical to a species originating in Tzion?
Coincidence seemed absurd.
Imitation was possible.
But if Eklis had copied the Sapiens form...
why?
And from whom had she first seen it?
Nobody knew.
Not even the Astrals.
For now, Eklis remained another impossible question inside an already impossible war.
XYPHERA
The Universe of Xyphera was nothing like Kryndor.
Nothing like Vorakhan.
Nothing like Elyndra.
Its worlds had developed under different evolutionary pressures, and among them rose the civilization of the Insectoides.
Their home planet:
NEXYRA.
From orbit, Nexyra resembled an enormous living jewel.
Great forests of violet and black vegetation covered continents divided by luminous rivers.
Organic cities climbed into the atmosphere in spiralling structures resembling combinations of trees, hives and cathedrals.
But these cities were not primitive.
Their surfaces contained advanced communication networks.
Living walls processed information.
Ships were partly grown and partly engineered.
Weapons incorporated biological mechanisms alongside artificial systems.
Their civilization embodied:
FUTURA-SKUDA · ORDO.
Where the Minas mastered machines and the Sylvani fused technology with spiritual philosophy, the Insectoides had perfected another discipline:
BIOTECHNOLOGY.
To them, flesh was not the opposite of technology.
Flesh was technology.
DNA was architecture.
Evolution was engineering.
And this made what the Sumaya intended to do to them more than invasion.
It was sacrilege.
VIKTRAVIAN
Among the defenders of Nexyra was Viktravian.
A female Insectoide.
A Rogue.
Not a thief.
The word carried very different associations within her culture.
Viktravian specialised in reconnaissance, infiltration, concealment, silent movement and the detection of threats before those threats became wars.
Her anatomy already gave her advantages most humanoid species would have required technology to reproduce.
Compound sensory systems.
Extraordinary peripheral perception.
Minute sensitivity to vibration.
The ability to detect subtle energetic disturbances across frequencies invisible to ordinary sight.
Wings capable of controlled bursts of movement.
And something the Sumaya had failed to anticipate:
Insectoides could see them.
Not with machines.
Not through spiritual scanners.
With their own eyes.
The First Ghost
Viktravian was crossing one of the upper galleries of the city of Vraxith when she saw the first one.
It stood beside a biological research chamber.
Transparent.
Thin.
A figure made from distortion.
Watching.
Viktravian stopped.
The Sumaya stopped.
For several seconds neither moved.
The entity had travelled through Minas cities without being seen.
It had crossed Orkyo fortresses while warriors swung blades blindly through it.
It had entered laboratories protected by the greatest detection systems of several civilizations.
It expected the same here.
Then Viktravian turned her head and looked directly into what passed for its face.
The entity recoiled.
Viktravian immediately understood.
“You thought I couldn't see you.”
The Sumaya fled.
Viktravian followed.
It passed through a wall.
Viktravian didn't.
She sprinted towards another corridor, opened her wings and launched herself through an exterior aperture.
Wind struck her body.
She curved around the building.
There.
The spiritual figure emerged from the opposite wall.
Viktravian raised her weapon.
Fired.
The projectile passed through it.
The Sumaya continued moving.
Physical weapon.
Spiritual target.
Useless.
Viktravian clicked her mandibles in frustration.
Then another figure appeared.
Then another.
Five.
Nine.
Twelve.
They were everywhere.
The alarm began.
Nexyra Sees the Invisible
The Sumaya had made a catastrophic miscalculation.
On Drokhar they had hunted unnoticed until technology exposed them.
On Ghorvann they had relied upon invisibility until Skuda and Futura detection systems adapted.
On Nexyra, none of that mattered.
Children saw them.
Workers saw them.
Soldiers saw them.
The elderly saw them.
Everywhere the Sumaya attempted to observe...
eyes turned towards them.
For perhaps the first time since their emergence into the Cosmos, the predators experienced something unfamiliar.
They were being watched back.
And the Insectoides did not react with panic.
They reacted with Ordo.
Networks activated.
Cities sealed biological sectors.
Every sighting was mapped.
Movement patterns were calculated.
Spiritual researchers mobilised.
Rogues followed Sumaya through population centres, tracking the paths their incorporeal bodies used.
The Sumaya attempted to feed.
Insectoide defenders immediately recognised the weakening effect.
Spiritual countermeasures were developed.
Their feeding grounds disappeared.
The Sumaya had come expecting prey.
Instead they had found a species biologically equipped to expose them.
So the plan changed.
The Rapax came.
The Assault on Nexyra
The sky split above Vraxith.
Not with spacecraft.
With wounds.
Black apertures opened across the atmosphere.
Rapax fell through them.
Thousands.
Winged gargoyles.
Massive quadrupedal beasts.
Crawler organisms with armoured bodies.
Acid-spitting hunters.
Creatures assembled from biological lessons stolen from worlds the Insectoides had never seen.
And among them moved Sumaya spirits.
Viktravian stood on a high platform overlooking the city as the first wave descended.
She activated twin blades.
Behind her thousands of Insectoide warriors prepared.
The commander transmitted one order.
“Protect the Genomic Sanctums.”
That immediately told Viktravian something.
The attackers had a target.
The battle began.
Rapax crashed into living towers.
Insectoide weapons answered.
Organic artillery opened like enormous flowers and fired condensed energy towards the sky.
Flying warriors met gargoyle-like Rapax in the air.
Biological defensive creatures awakened from beneath the cities.
And unlike every previous civilization the Sumaya had attacked...
the spiritual entities themselves were not safe.
The Insectoides had spent generations developing weapons capable of interacting with subtle biological and spiritual frequencies.
Once scientists understood that the Sumaya possessed stable energetic patterns, they recalibrated those systems.
Viktravian saw the first Sumaya die.
A spirit attempted to pass through an Insectoide warrior.
A pulse struck it.
The entity convulsed.
Its form became visible to everyone.
Then fractured into streams of energy.
For a moment the battlefield almost stopped.
The Sumaya could be killed.
Viktravian transmitted immediately:
“They are vulnerable.”
The response spread across Nexyra.
And the Insectoides attacked them.
The Genomic Sanctum
Viktravian understood the objective too late.
The main Rapax assault was a distraction.
Deep beneath Vraxith existed one of the most sacred places in Insectoide civilization.
The Genomic Sanctum.
It contained ancestral genetic sequences representing millions of years of Insectoide evolution.
Not merely databases.
Living archives.
Every major adaptation.
Every lineage.
Every evolutionary achievement considered worthy of preservation.
To another civilization, DNA might be biological information.
To the Insectoides:
DNA was ancestry.
Identity.
History.
Inheritance.
To steal it was not simple espionage.
It was desecration.
Viktravian reached the Sanctum as three Rapax tore through the final security membrane.
Behind them floated Sumaya spirits.
One entity was already inside the central genomic chamber.
Viktravian screamed.
Not from fear.
From outrage.
She attacked.
The first Rapax lost its head.
The second received a blade through the thorax.
Viktravian used its collapsing body as leverage, launched herself upwards and opened her wings.
She rotated in the air and struck the third creature across the spine.
It fell.
The Sumaya moved towards her.
She could see every one of them.
Five.
Viktravian activated the spiritual resonance field on her weapon.
“Come.”
They did.
The first entered from the left.
She cut through it.
Its incorporeal body resisted unlike flesh, but the resonant blade disrupted its structure.
The entity screamed inside her mind.
The second attempted to drain her.
Viktravian felt strength leave her limbs.
She thrust directly through its centre.
The Sumaya fractured.
The remaining three retreated.
Viktravian pursued.
One disappeared through the ceiling.
Another through the floor.
The third remained beside the genomic archive.
And in its hands—
something glowed.
A sample.
Tiny.
Almost meaningless physically.
But Viktravian understood immediately.
Insectoide genetic material.
“No.”
The Sumaya fled.
Viktravian followed.
The Chase
Through walls.
Through laboratories.
Through city layers.
The Sumaya could ignore matter.
Viktravian could not.
But she was faster than almost anything physical.
She predicted its route.
Intercepted.
The spirit emerged through a surface and found Viktravian waiting.
She attacked.
The entity twisted away.
The genetic sample flew from its grasp.
Viktravian reached for it.
Then the wall exploded.
A massive Rapax burst through.
Its claws struck Viktravian.
She crashed across the chamber.
The Sumaya recovered the sample.
Viktravian rose.
The Rapax attacked again.
She ducked.
Severed one leg.
The creature collapsed.
She stabbed through its skull.
By the time she looked up...
the Sumaya was gone.
Outside the city, the battle was ending.
The Insectoides were winning.
Their ability to perceive Sumaya spirits had destroyed the enemy's greatest advantage.
Their weapons had adapted.
Rapax bodies covered the streets.
Sumaya entities vanished or died.
The black apertures began closing.
The invasion had failed.
The defenders roared in victory.
Viktravian did not join them.
She stood inside the damaged Genomic Sanctum.
Looking at an empty containment structure.
They had won the battle.
But something had been stolen.
The Heresy
When the ruling council learned what had happened, the reaction exceeded grief.
Insectoides did not shout unnecessarily.
That day they did.
The theft was formally classified under an ancient concept that translated poorly into Common Speech.
The closest approximation was:
THE GREAT DISHONOUR.
But even that did not capture it.
To steal Insectoide DNA was to steal their ancestors.
To use it without consent was to violate the continuity between generations.
To alter it was sacrilege.
To reproduce it inside another organism...
was unthinkable.
And this enemy had taken it specifically because it wanted to experiment.
Viktravian stood before the council.
“They will use it.”
Nobody disagreed.
“For what?” asked an elder.
Viktravian thought about the Sumaya.
Their spiritual bodies.
Their inability to remain in physical reality.
Their obsession with biological adaptation.
Then she understood why they had come.
“Our genome contains mechanisms for maintaining multiple biological systems under one coherent identity.”
Silence.
The scientists stared at her.
Insectoide biology had evolved to coordinate complex structures.
Different tissues.
Multiple sensory systems.
Adaptive metamorphic stages.
Biological integration far beyond most humanoid species.
Viktravian continued.
“They aren't trying to become Insectoides.”
The horror became clear.
“They're trying to learn how to make a body hold them.”
The Key
Far inside the Inferno, the stolen fragment arrived.
Tiny.
A molecule among mountains of bodies.
Yet the reaction was immediate.
Sumaya researchers—or whatever equivalent consciousness guided their experiments—began analysing it.
The genetic architecture revealed solutions.
Integration.
Stability.
Adaptation.
Ways biological structures could remain coherent while supporting radically different internal systems.
They had energy.
They had stolen bodies.
They had technology.
They had Rapax.
But they still lacked something essential.
A stable bridge between spiritual identity and engineered flesh.
The Insectoides had just given them part of the answer.
Not willingly.
Never willingly.
Eklis watched.
The Sapiens-shaped Meta-Goddess of the Inferno stood among the laboratories while structures grown from stolen DNA began forming.
She touched one unfinished body.
It convulsed.
For a fraction of a second...
a Sumaya spirit entered it.
The flesh rejected the entity.
The body collapsed.
Failure.
Eklis showed no disappointment.
Another body began growing.
Then another.
Then another.
They had time.
They had worlds.
And now...
they had the key.
The Eternal War
On Nexyra, the declaration was transmitted across every Insectoide colony in Xyphera.
It was not a temporary military response.
It was not contingent upon negotiation.
It contained no conditions for peace.
From that day forward:
The Sumaya were enemies of the Insectoides.
The Rapax were enemies of the Insectoides.
Any creature carrying stolen Insectoide genomic structures would be considered evidence of the same violation.
No treaty could erase what had occurred.
No passage of time could make it acceptable.
The declaration ended with words that would later become famous throughout the Cosmos:
What was taken from our blood will be returned through theirs.
Viktravian stood before the assembled warriors of Nexyra.
She had lost friends.
The Sanctum had been violated.
Something sacred had been stolen.
But the enemy had revealed a weakness of its own.
The Sumaya believed incorporeality made them untouchable.
The Insectoides had proven otherwise.
They could see them.
They could track them.
And now...
they could kill them.
Across the Cosmos, civilizations were beginning to understand different pieces of the same nightmare.
Ragnak had discovered that the Sumaya fed upon spiritual energy.
Nerok had discovered that the Rapax collected bodies for experimentation.
Rhex had discovered the Inferno itself—and died with that knowledge.
Viktravian discovered something else.
The Sumaya were not content to create servants forever.
They wanted:
BODIES OF THEIR OWN.
And somewhere beyond the known Universes, Eklis watched the first experiments continue.
Failure after failure.
Until one day...
a Sumaya entered a newly grown body.
The body shook.
Twisted.
Screamed.
Then became still.
Seconds passed.
A hand moved.
Fingers closed.
Lungs took their first breath.
Eyes opened.
Eklis smiled.
Not perfection.
Not yet.
But progress.
And for the first time since the anomaly had appeared in the Cosmos...
a Sumaya remained inside flesh.
The door had opened.
Only slightly.
But the Insectoides understood better than almost anyone what evolution could do with a small beginning.
And Viktravian knew one terrible truth:
the next time the Sumaya came to Nexyra, they might not come as ghosts.