The years unspooled, not in peace, but in a brittle, watchful quiet. The Triumvirate of Royals, once architects of a new empire, found their grand design fraying at the edges. Their paranoia, a slow-burning ember from the exile of Nekona, was now fanned into a constant, cold fire.
The galaxy had begun to stir. The stories of Gesshirui's drowning and Daksa's perpetual torment had not remained secret. They were whispered in asteroid cantinas, condemned in galactic councils, and etched into the strategic logs of neighboring powers. The Nekonian ascent, built on conquest and cruelty, was proving to be its own cage. Trade partners became wary, then distant. Diplomatic channels silted over. Scout ships from unfamiliar alliances were spotted probing the edges of their territory with increasing frequency. The Royals could feel it, the universe was beginning to knit together a net, and they were the snarling beast at its center.
Their grip, so absolute on Planet Neko, felt slippery on the scale of star systems. Each report of a lost outpost, each intercepted communiqué hinting at a "coalition of the aggrieved," tightened the knot of fear in their chests. They ruled from thrones of polished obsidian, but their eyes were always on the shadows, waiting for the retaliation they knew they had earned.
It was in this pressure cooker of dread that the child was born.
His name was Saber. From his first breaths in the austere medical ward of the Smilodon Sector, he was different. The air around him crackled with a latent energy that interfered with sensors. His cries held a resonance that made veteran warriors' hackles rise. As he grew from infant to toddler, the signs became impossible to ignore, unexplained surges of strength that shattered play-things meant for youths twice his age; eyes that, in moments of frustration, glowed with a faint, phosphorescent amber. He was a Smilodon, yes, but he carried an echo of something far older, a whisper of the legendary power the Royals both venerated and feared.
To the Triumvirate, Saber was not a child. He was a paradox and a peril. A Smilodon, a breed from the faction of raw strength, manifesting this nascent, unstable might? He was a living challenge to their delicate, faction-balanced rule. In their fear-steeped minds, he crystallized every threat: the internal revolt, the rise of a singular, uncontainable power, the spark that could ignite their tinderbox empire from within. They could not have a Smilodon as a future royal. They could not have a Saber at all.
The decree of exile was issued not with public fanfare, but with cold, clinical secrecy. He was deemed a "genetic instability," a "threat to public safety." He was to be removed, cast adrift in a derelict life-pod toward a barren system, a quiet erasure of a potential problem.
But they underestimated a father's heart.
Creodont, Saber's sire, was a broad-shouldered Smilodon of few words and unwavering loyalty, loyalty that had just been shattered. A decorated veteran of the Gesshirui pacification, he had served the Royals with the belief that their harshness was a necessity for survival. Returning from a frontier patrol to find his son condemned and already taken, he felt a fury so vast and cold it froze the very marrow in his bones.
He did not plead. He did not rage in their halls. He simply vanished from his post, his commander's insignia left discarded on his empty bunk. In a swift, stolen ship, he pierced the blockade around Saber's exile vector, using every ounce of his tactical genius not to serve the empire, but to betray it.
He found the life-pod, a speck of metal against the infinite dark, its precious cargo crying silently inside. Gathering his son to his chest, Creodont turned his ship toward the uncharted fringes, the engines flaring like a shooting star of defiance. As Planet Neko shrunk to a mere glint of poisoned jewel behind him, he made a vow to the uncaring stars, a vow that was not a shout, but an oath forged in stellar silence.
He would raise Saber. He would protect him from the Royals who feared him, and from the galaxy that would soon hunt them both. And one day, he would return. Not for a throne, but for a reckoning. The three Royals had exiled a child, and in doing so, they had created something infinitely more dangerous: a nemesis with nothing left to lose, and a father's wrath as his guiding star.
Far away, in the silent, screaming halls of Jigoku, Rushifa observed this new fracture. A child of power, cast out. A warrior of purpose, turned rebel. His serpentine smile deepened. The legend was stirring. The pieces were moving. And chaos, beautiful chaos, was always the best ground in which to sow the seeds of control.
In the sealed terrarium of Planet Neko, under the shadow of the Triumvirate's paranoia, a single flower was cultivated with obsessive care. It was the Royals' sole, true point of pride, a fragile counterweight to the creeping dread of their empire. They called him Blade.
His origins were a carefully scrubbed secret. A decade prior, he had been nothing, a nameless, feral child scrabbling in the irradiated under-belts of Neo-Nekona's industrial sprawl. He was of no discernible pure breed; his coat was a stunning, wild mosaic of spotted gold and sleek ebony, his eyes the piercing, unreadable green of deep jungle pools. They found him during a "sanitization sweep," a child who had not only survived alone in that toxic wasteland but had, according to stunned patrol reports, single-handedly disabled two security drones with nothing but scavenged wire and terrifyingly precise throws. He was an Ocicat, a natural, random, and breathtakingly beautiful genetic expression, a living masterpiece of the Mixed Breed lineage.
The Royals saw not a child, but a tool, an answer. In a time of external pressure, here was raw, unbranded power, sprung from their own soil. They took him in, erased his past, and gave him a new name, Blade. It was not a name, but a purpose. A weapon to be honed.
And honed he was. From the moment he was bathed, clothed, and placed in the sterile, hyper-advanced training modules of the Citadel, he was exceptional. History, tactics, xenobiology, starship mechanics, concepts his tutors presented over months, he mastered in days. His physical training was a spectacle. At seven, he moved with a preternatural grace that made the most agile Purebred duelists seem clumsy. At eight, he could interface with a starship's neural core, processing tactical data at a speed that caused the systems to overheat. At nine, he defeated three veteran combat instructors in a simultaneous spar, not through brute strength, but through a flawlessly efficient economy of motion, as if he could see the blueprint of the fight three moves before it unfolded.
By ten, a profound, silent boredom had settled in his brilliant green eyes. He had passed every teacher. He had solved every simulation. The challenges of Planet Neko were exhausted. The Citadel's walls, once vast, now felt like the sides of a crib.
With mastery came a cold, undeniable arrogance. It was not the blustering pride of a bully, but the serene, unshakable certainty of a demigod among insects. He knew his own worth because every metric, every test, every awed or fearful glance from his superiors confirmed it. The Royals showered him with every material comfort, every piece of knowledge he craved, but they withheld the one thing his transcendent nature demanded: purpose.
He began to petition them, his voice still that of a child, but his words carrying the weight of strategic filings. He presented detailed plans, a surgical strike on a frontier outpost of the nascent coalition, a solo reconnaissance mission into Daksa's untamed zones to refine survival algorithms, a pilgrimage to the dead homeworld of Nekona to study the ambient energy signatures where the first Tigers had fallen. He craved a real conquest. Not the scripted exercises on the planetary punching bag of Daksa, but a true test against an unbroken enemy. Each victory he sought was a stone he wished to lay on the altar of his own validation, proof to himself and the silent, watchful universe of his singular existence.
The Triumvirate refused him. Every time.
Their fear was his cage. The galactic attention they felt pressing in on them like a vise was, in their minds, a tangible threat. To let their prodigy, their crowning achievement and potential secret weapon, venture beyond their controlled space was an unbearable risk. What if he was captured? Studied? Turned? What if his power, which they barely understood, attracted the very attention they were desperate to evade?
"The time is not yet right, Blade," the Purebred Royal would intone, her voice like mountain ice.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQXZNBK7WLm
"Your brilliance must be protected," the Mixed Breed Royal would add, his fingers steepled, a master programmer unwilling to release his ultimate code.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAiEd38vIB1
"Strength without patience is wasted," the Smilodon Royal would grunt, the contradiction of his own breed's philosophy tasting like ash.
Their refusals, wrapped in the gauze of caution and care, were the only lessons they could still impart that he could not instantly master. They bred in him a new, volatile emotion, frustration. It simmered beneath his polished exterior, a geothermal heat under a pristine lake. He would stand on the soaring observation deck of the Citadel, his small hands resting on the bio-luminous railing, watching the traffic of warships and freighters stream to and from the stars, a river of potential journeys he was forbidden to take.
Planet Neko, for all its conquered glory and stolen technology, had become a gilded prison. And a weapon, no matter how perfectly forged, if never drawn, begins to question the hand that holds it. Blade, the prize, the prodigy, the Ocicat with the name of a edge, was starting to feel the first, faint tremors of a desire they could not control: the desire to cut his own path.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb84U9CTVf9
and then Add to home screen.