Chaos on the ground reached its peak.
Death Watch’s elite forces, unstoppable a moment ago, were suddenly caught flat-footed under a rain of death from above, the shockwaves from missile detonations throwing entire ranks of soldiers off their feet.
Burning wreckage fell like meteors.
“Scatter!
Find cover!
Anti-air fire — where the hell is our anti-air fire?!” a squad leader’s furious voice tore through the panicked comm channel.
But the chaos was only beginning.
While Death Watch’s air power reeled from the sudden strike, and their ground forces fell into panicked disarray, Keldabe unleashed its true edge.
Alarms shrieked as concealed hangar doors across the city ground open.
Blue-and-white Vikings launched, engines flaring brilliant blue, screaming skyward — joined by every Kom’rk fighter drawn in from Sundari and the capital’s own reserves, all rising together to fight.
“Viking squadron, up!
Clear out the stragglers!
Cover the ground forces!” A young, sharp voice cut through the channel — Omen Wren, his Viking already shifting into mech mode mid-flight, boots crushing plaza pavement to rubble as he landed, shoulder cannons unleashing missiles into a cluster of Death Watch troopers crawling out of a wrecked landing craft trying to regroup, tearing them apart instantly.
The Viking squadron dove savagely on the Kom’rk transports that had survived the Wraiths’ first strike and were now scattering in blind panic.
Laser fire crisscrossed the sky, explosions blooming like fireworks.
The Vikings, backed by heavy firepower and thick armor, formed a moving wall of death at low altitude, mercilessly reaping any Death Watch trooper trying to regroup or find cover below.
Even so, Death Watch’s soldiers kept pressing desperately toward pockets of relative safety on the city’s outskirts.
“For Mandalore!” A fanatical war cry passed between invaders over an encrypted channel.
“Target zone suppressed!
Defenders scattering!” A Kom’rk pilot on the outskirts reported back, giddy with the apparent success.
On the ground, Death Watch’s airborne troops regrouped fast, landing craft slamming down hard into their designated zones, hatches opening to disgorge waves of heavily armed, murder-eyed soldiers.
Jetpack troopers wove through the low airspace, sweeping remaining resistance with blaster fire and mounted mini-rockets.
Tor Vizsla himself hadn’t come down in any of the landing craft — he’d chosen the front line instead.
Cutting through multiple layers of encirclement, a Shadral-class troop transport slammed down like a falling meteor into the central plaza.
Before the dust had even settled, his broad, overwhelming figure was already striding out of the smoke.
His visor swept the elite of Clan Sax, already converging around him into a wall of steel — heavy troopers armed with blaster rifles, rotary blaster cannons, even shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.
Tor’s sharpest blade, and he intended to use it.
“Forward!” Tor’s voice carried through his helmet.
“Crush anything in your path!” He swept a hand toward the wide avenue leading straight to the city’s command center.
“Death Watch!
Forward!”
They surged toward Keldabe’s heart, Tor walking at the front, every step deliberate.
“Damn you, Kurt!
Is this all you’ve got — cheap tricks and cowardice?!” Tor’s fury nearly cracked his helmet as he watched his air power collapse and his ground forces bleed out around him, his visor locking hard onto the direction of the city center.
“Warriors of Mandalore!” Tor raised the Darksaber overhead, rallying the soldiers reeling in confusion around him.
“Follow me!
Tear apart these cowards’ defenses!
Wash away this shame with their blood!”
What remained of Clan Sax’s elite surged with the fury of cornered animals, ignoring the brutal dogfights overhead and the scattered fire on their flanks, following Tor at the point of the spear like a blade driving forward.
Keldabe’s heart — once its bustling commercial and administrative center — had become a slaughterhouse of steel and fire.
Towering skyscrapers, blending traditional Mandalorian architecture with sleek modern lines, now stood scarred with blackened craters and gaping wounds.
Their once-massive glass facades lay shattered, leaving only twisted metal frames behind.
The wide boulevards were choked with the wreckage of downed speeders, collapsed signage, shattered concrete, and the ruins of hasty fortifications — twisted barricades of debris scattered everywhere.
The air hung thick with acrid smoke, ozone, burning plastic, and blood.
The shriek of blaster fire, the dull crunch of explosions, and the cries of the dying formed the battlefield’s constant, grinding backdrop.
Tor Vizsla moved through the narrow streets like a human battering ram, contempt for cover entirely, relying instead on his beskar armor’s sheer resilience to absorb whatever came at him.
Heavy blaster fire slammed into his chest plate, bursting in blinding sparks, barely rocking his massive frame.
He gripped the Darksaber tight.
VMMM — SHNK!
A hum that seemed to rise from some bottomless place tore through the air, followed by the sharp ring of metal drawn from its sheath.
The Darksaber ignited. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
The space around the blade itself seemed to warp faintly, radiating something cold, still, and utterly annihilating.
Tor roared, gripping the hilt with both hands, and swung down in one heavy, diagonal cut.
A New Mandalorian fighter died instantly beneath the blade.
A second thrust killed another closing in from behind.
Every swing of the Darksaber claimed a life.
It sheared through thick metal support beams and heavy blast doors with equal ease.
Everywhere Tor passed, he left nothing behind but burning wreckage, melted metal, and broken bodies.
His visor swept the battlefield in a constant, hungry search for anything still breathing.
Just as Tor cut down two New Mandalorian fighters sheltering behind a derelict tank, his blade slicing them both in half, the flash of fire lighting up the twisted horror of his helmet—
“Tor Vizsla!”
A sharp, cutting shout, cold as an ice pick through flame, cut clean through the roar of the explosions and landed square in Tor’s ears.
Tor spun around.
Across the intersection, in the shadow of a half-collapsed bank tower, Kurt Vizsla’s silhouette emerged.
He wore traditional Mandalorian armor forged from beskar, no helmet, his face streaked with ash and smoke — but his silver-gray eyes burned bright, startling even in the dim light.
In his hand, he held nothing but the plain, unadorned beskar longsword.
Their eyes met across the smoke and the burning ruins, two blades of pure will crashing together before either of them had moved a step.
“Well, look who it is.
The little orphan I threw out of the clan.
You actually think you can beat me?” Tor Vizsla raised the Darksaber, charging Kurt like an enraged bull, both hands overhead, a storm of destruction bearing down on him.
“Tor.
You’re not fit to call yourself a Mandalorian.
I’m going to kill you.
For my parents.” Every muscle in Kurt’s body coordinated in a single, explosive burst.
He didn’t block.
He didn’t retreat.
His body snapped forward at a diagonal angle like a drawn bowstring released, moving so fast he nearly blurred out of sight.