Chapter 13: The Commander’s Speech: A Bright Future
Deep within the belly of the vessel Radiance, the vast integrated maintenance bay had been temporarily repurposed as a gathering place.
The cold metal deck was densely packed with people.
No orderly formations, no gleaming armor—only a suffocating sea of gray and blood-stained warriors, ravaged by the fires of war.
Three hundred and five thousand souls.
That number now embodied the boundless, silent crowd before him.
They appeared like battered remnants clawing their way out of hell’s forge.
Their silver battle armor bore countless scars and punctures, blackened by energy burns and stained with dried, darkened blood. Many plates were warped and twisted, exposing damaged life-support conduits beneath.
Their once-pristine white wings were no longer pure; feathers were disheveled, broken, smeared with a mix of blood and stardust, like banners battered by relentless storms.
Nearly every face and arm was wrapped in blood-soaked bandages or marked by horrific, unhealed wounds.
The air was thick with the pungent stench of blood, the acrid tang of disinfectant, the burnt smell of scorched metal, and an all-consuming exhaustion that seeped into bones and souls alike.
The vast space was eerily silent.
Only suppressed groans, heavy breaths, and the low hum of the ship’s engines echoed faintly against the empty bulkheads.
Despair cloaked the gathering like an invisible, weighty fog pressing down on every heart. They had just escaped the sea of blood that was the Furious Ocean, yet ahead lay an even deeper, boundless darkness.
Home?
Civilization?
King?
Order?
All the beliefs that had once driven them to fight had crumbled.
Who were they now?
Where were they headed?
Where was the future?
This overwhelming confusion and the void of having lost everything threatened to extinguish their last flicker of hope completely.
At that moment, at the far end of the maintenance bay, the heavy hatch connecting to the upper command bridge hissed open with the hydraulic system’s groan.
A figure stepped onto the raised platform beyond the door, moving with steady but weary steps.
It was Crane Wind.
He had not changed into fresh armor; still clad in the legionnaire-grade silver armor that had endured the brutal battles in the Furious Ocean.
The silver plates had long since lost their shine, covered in countless crisscrossing sword slashes, dents, and blackened scorch marks. Beneath the thick bandages on his left shoulder, faint bloodstains seeped through.
His face showed clear signs of fatigue, brows furrowed with an unshakable weight, pale from blood loss.
Yet as he ascended the platform, stood tall, and swept his gaze over the endless, scarred comrades below, an invisible, unyielding aura erupted from his battered frame—like a towering peak piercing through the mists of despair.
There he stood, silent, yet like a solitary mountain rising from the earth, shattering the fog of hopelessness.
A totem, scarred but still standing proudly.
All the weary eyes, all the lost gazes, were irresistibly drawn, like iron filings to a magnet, fixed upon that lone figure.
Within the silent maintenance bay, only heavier breaths and pounding hearts remained.
Crane Wind’s gaze slowly swept across the crowd—deep and cold like the universe’s frozen depths, yet harboring a molten fire capable of igniting starry rivers.
He saw warriors clutching broken swords with their remaining hands despite lost arms;
Saw comrades with no legs supported by others, their eyes still burning with unyielding spirit;
Saw countless pairs of bloodshot, pain-filled, confused eyes fixed upon him.
He took a deep breath, the air thick with blood and metal, heavy and potent.
When he spoke, his hoarse, deep voice, tinged with the rasp of metal grinding, echoed clearly through every corner of the bay via the amplifiers—like an icy war hammer shattering the silence:
“Soldiers!”
Those three words struck the hearts of all like a stone thrown into a still lake, stirring a violent surge within everyone.
“What have we lost?!”
His voice rose sharply, carrying soul-rending grief and accusation, reverberating through the vast space:
“We have lost the Celestial Palace!”
“Lost that golden hall once symbolizing supreme royal power!”
“It now lies at the bottom of the Furious Ocean—a burning wreckage!”
“We have lost King Hua Ye! Lost the Angel King to whom we once pledged our lives!”
“He has become a prisoner, groveling before the enemy!”
“We have lost General Sumary!”
“Lost the First Legion!”
“Lost countless comrades who fought and died alongside us!” His voice trembled uncontrollably as he pointed to the crowd below, to the silent testimony of countless scars and sacrifices.
“Look around you!”
“Look at the empty spaces!”
“Two hundred and twenty-two thousand!”
“Two hundred and twenty-two thousand brothers who broke through with us!”
“Their blood has stained the Furious Ocean red!”
“Their bones paved our path to survival!”
“Their heroic souls watch us this very moment!”
Each number was a heavy blow to the chest, eyes stinging with sorrow. Grief and rage surged silently through the ranks like a tangible tide.
Crane Wind’s voice deepened with the weight of thunder suppressed for millennia:
“We have lost our homeland! The angelic civilization—the peaceful paradise we once dreamed of after unification—is now occupied by the female angels!”
“They brand us ‘Heaven’s Scum’! They seek to erase our names from angelic history completely!”
“‘Heaven’s Scum’—those words burn like the vilest curse, igniting the deepest humiliation and fury in every heart!”
Countless eyes reddened, heavy breaths roared like dying beasts!
“Yes! We have lost everything!”
His voice roared like a wounded lion, shaking the entire assembly.
“Royalty!”
“Order!”
“Glory!”
“Home!”
“Comrades!”
“We have been utterly defeated!”
“Utterly and completely!”
He stopped suddenly, like the silence before a storm. The immense pressure suffocated everyone, threatening to snuff out the last spark.
Then, breaking the suffocating silence, Crane Wind’s voice suddenly shifted—like thunder cleaving the darkness, carrying the resolute power to break chains and embrace life through death, exploding forth:
“But—!”
“Soldiers! Raise your heads!”
“Open your eyes!”
He flung his arms wide, as if to embrace the entire universe:
“Look! We are still alive!”
“We—the three hundred and five thousand sons of angels—”
“Still stand upon this cold deck!”
“Our hearts still beat!”
“Our blood has yet to run dry!”
“We have lost a decayed throne but broken free from shackles!”
“We have lost false order but seen the true nature of survival!”
“We have lost a so-called homeland but gained the right to choose our future!”
His voice burned like molten lava, piercing the fog with clarity:
“Royal commands must be obeyed? Soldiers must not be betrayed?”
Crane Wind’s voice dripped with icy sarcasm as he echoed the cold maxim that had once rejected Kaisa and bound him for nearly ten thousand years.
“Now the King is a prisoner, his fate held by the enemy!”
“That so-called ‘royal command’ is nothing but an empty paper coerced by the foe!”
“A joke!”
“What right does it have to command us to die?!”
“And ‘soldiers must not be betrayed’—”
His voice soared to its peak, solemn and powerful, echoing like a solemn oath:
“That is the iron law I, Crane Wind, stand here today to uphold!”
His armored fingers forcefully pointed to the crowd below, one by one:
“To honor your trust! To honor your belief!”
“To honor the blood and flesh that paved our way to survival!”
“To honor the eyes of the two hundred and twenty-two thousand heroic souls gazing upon us, hoping we live on, carrying their will!”
“This—that is the true betrayal!”
“This—that is the responsibility we must bear!”
“This—that is the only reason we fight on, live on!”
The silence was replaced by heavy breathing and stifled sobs.
Countless eyes once filled with despair and confusion now reignited with flame!
A profound sense of tragic nobility, of being understood, acknowledged, and entrusted with a sacred mission, surged wildly through the crowd.
Crane Wind’s voice deepened, steady like the stars:
“We are not cowards fleeing!”
“We are the spark!”
“The last backbone of angelic civilization!”
“The final hope for our race’s continuation!”
“Every living one of you! Your wounds!”
“Your unyielding warrior spirit! Your devotion to comrades!”
“That is our most precious treasure!”
“A spirit fire no enemy can ever snatch from us—true to us, the sons of angels!”
His words were a beacon in the darkness, guiding lost ships through the fog. Wisdom, blood, resources, history, and spirit—each given the meaning of “spark”—instantly dispelled the void and bestowed a sacred mission upon this flight of escape.
Crane Wind’s gaze shifted to the vast, unfathomable darkness beyond the viewport, his voice carrying the echo of transcendent time and space.
He turned sharply to face the three hundred and five thousand soldiers again, his eyes ablaze with a fire fierce enough to burn away all despair:
“Today! We are abandoned by the old world!”
“Exiled from our homeland!”
“The road ahead seems dark and endless, fraught with death!”
“But this darkness—this is where infinite possibilities are born!”
“It does not belong to the female angels!”
“Nor to the decayed Celestial Palace!”
“It belongs to us! To the pioneers who dare march into the dark!”
“To the vanguards who rebuild civilization from the ruins!”
His voice thundered like a great bell, carrying the majesty of a new epoch’s dawn:
“Our homeland has burned to ashes! The old path leads only to death!”
“Then we shall forge new frontiers!”
“At the edge of the universe! Beyond the sea of stars!”
“With our hands! With our wisdom!”
“With our blood and sweat!”
“To build a true home of our own!”
“A new order without oppression or injustice!”
“A place where all angels can hold their heads high and breathe free!”
“A new civilization worthy of our sacrifice! Worthy of our bloodline!”
“Worthy of the name ‘Angel’!”
“We are no longer warriors of the Celestial Palace!” Crane Wind’s voice cut like steel, declaring the total end of an era.
“We are the guardians of the spark! The pioneers of the future! The founders of a new age!”
He abruptly drew the battered, nicked, and slightly curved broken sword “Dominion” from his waist—the blade still gleaming coldly under the dim light despite its damage.
Crane Wind raised the broken sword high, its tip pointing toward the vast, unknown cosmos beyond the viewport.
His scarred form stood like a spear; his voice swept through the maintenance bay like a cosmic storm, carrying an irrevocable decree and command:
“This sword may be broken! Its edge still remains!”
“The old shackles—we sever today!”
“The road ahead is dark! But my heart is the light!”
“The spark will never die! Civilization endures!”
“All forces—listen!”
He drew a deep breath, summoning all his strength to hammer the final command into every soldier’s soul like a war drum:
“Target—Sky City! Seize what is rightfully ours!”
“Then—!”
“Follow me—”
“Into deep space—!!”
“Into the future—!!”
“Towards redemption—!!”
“Forward—!!!!!!”
“Forward—!!!!!”
“The spark will never die—!!!”
“Into deep space—!!!”
“Into the future—!!!”
His final roar shattered the silence like a volcano long suppressed erupting in full fury!
Three hundred and five thousand voices united into a tidal wave capable of tearing through galaxies! The maintenance bay trembled beneath the roar!
Despair was utterly crushed! Confusion was burned away!
In its place blazed a fervent, near-maniacal conviction and a resolute bond of life and death!
Each scarred warrior’s eyes burned with a new flame—that of hope! Of vengeance!
And above all, the fire of creation!
Crane Wind’s raised broken sword became a symbol etched deep into every soul.
He was no longer a defeated general but a blazing star leading them to live through death and fight the unknown—a lone lighthouse in the dark vastness!
The fleet’s engines roared to life with renewed vigor, as if sensing this overwhelming will to live.
The battered steel torrent, bearing three hundred and five thousand unyielding sparks, tore through the silence of the cosmos and accelerated unflinchingly toward the set goal—Sky City, toward the “path of redemption” spoken of by their adoptive father’s wisdom—deep space.
Ten days later—
Ten days of desperate flight, like piercing backward through the veins of angelic civilization.
The shattered fleet led by Crane Wind was like a poisoned ice spear, leaving not the glory of conquest but scars of civilization and embers of destruction wherever it passed.
Grand star gates spanning star rivers, built through countless generations’ toil, silently collapsed under the white annihilation of directed antimatter bombs, reduced to twisted spatial scrap, utterly blocking the routes.
Wormhole tunnels stabilized for tens of thousands of years were disrupted by precisely detonated gravitational singularities; violent spatial turbulence raged like uncontrollable cosmic beasts, tearing anything attempting passage into fundamental particles.
Great worm bridges linking prosperous star domains turned to cosmic dust in chain-energy overload detonations; severed spacetime bonds writhed and dissipated painfully in the void like dying giant serpents.
Each detonation was accompanied by a cold countdown and emotionless execution orders from the bridge.
Each blast of destruction lit up on the sensor screens, causing the muscles beneath Crane Wind’s bloodstained, exhausted face to twitch ever so slightly.
Some star gates were older than he was—ancient monuments of angelic cosmic exploration.
Some wormholes were strategic passages he had personally led troops to open and name, still bearing the insignia of his engineering corps.
These magnificent infrastructures, forged from incalculable resources and embodying the crystallized wisdom of countless angels, were now being buried by his own hands.
More painful than destroying enemy fortresses was destroying the very foundations of the civilization he once protected and helped build.