The headquarters was alive with motion.
Armor sealed. Energy signatures stabilized. Weapons calibrated not for excess, but for endurance. Voices echoed through the halls — calm, practiced, almost routine.
Preparation had become a language the others spoke fluently.
Prime stood apart from it.
He leaned against the cold railing overlooking the central chamber, mask hanging loosely from his fingers. Below him, Omega adjusted his armament with disciplined precision. Tidal's presence bent the air around him, currents responding to thought alone. Garuda stretched his wings, feathers catching light that shouldn't have existed indoors.
They were ready.
Prime was not.
His thoughts spiraled quietly, inward, where no one could hear them.
They're preparing to fight beasts.
I'm preparing to fail.
Every step forward felt like borrowed time. Every victory — a delay, not a solution. The Abyssal Order wasn't another enemy. It wasn't corruption. It wasn't even hatred.
It was balance.
And Prime didn't know where he fit inside that equation.
Exe stirred faintly within him, a presence coiled but alert. For once, it said nothing. That silence felt heavier than any mockery.
Prime tightened his grip on the mask.
What am I supposed to do when strength isn't enough?
When willpower becomes irrelevant?
Below, Omega glanced up.
"You're drifting again," he said, voice steady but sharp enough to cut through the fog. "Stay grounded. We move in thirty."
Prime nodded — automatically.
"I will."
But even as he answered, his gaze slipped past the walls, past the city, past the world itself. Somewhere out there, things existed that could unmake everything they were preparing to protect.
The alarms sounded.
A beast breach. Close. Fast.
Prime straightened, forcing his thoughts back into his body as the others mobilized. He followed — because that was what he had always done.
But the questions followed him too.
---
Prime had never feared battle.
Blades, beasts, corruption — those were simple. They could be seen, measured, resisted. Even Exe, bound inside him, obeyed rules born of force and will.
What unsettled him now was something else entirely.
Expectation.
He moved through the ruined district with the others, steps automatic, senses duller than usual. His thoughts drifted inward, circling the same questions again and again like a wound refusing to close.
What am I supposed to do?
What can I do?
And if the answer is nothing… then why am I still here?
The fox-beast came out of the smoke without warning — lean, skeletal, its many eyes glowing with fractured intelligence. It moved too fast, its body phasing between steps, claws aimed straight for Prime's throat.
Omega shouted.
"PRIME—!"
Too late.
Prime didn't react. His mind was elsewhere, tangled in futures that led only to loss. The beast slammed into him, tearing him off his feet, claws raking across his armor as they crashed through a wall.
Pain flared — sharp, grounding, real.
Before the creature could strike again, a line of blinding light carved through its skull. The fox-beast collapsed mid-lunge, body splitting apart as Omega landed between it and Prime, lightning still crackling along his arm.
"Focus," Omega said sharply, not angry — concerned. "You vanished."
Prime pushed himself up slowly. "I know."
Garuda hovered nearby, wings twitching. "That thing almost had you."
Tidal said nothing, but the water around him tightened defensively.
Prime looked at the remains of the beast. He hadn't felt threatened. He hadn't felt anything.
That frightened him more than the attack.
Later, when the ruins were quiet again, Prime stood alone.
The mask rested in his face — ancient, scarred, unchanged since the day he became an Awakener. He had avoided using it for a reason. Its power was not strength. It was truth.
And truth always demanded payment.
"I don't need more power," Prime whispered to the empty air.
"I need answers."
He placed his hands on the surface of his mask.
The world disappeared.
Not darkened — unmade.
Knowledge poured in, not as visions, but as certainty. Connections snapped into place. Probabilities aligned. Every question he had been circling suddenly had weight, shape, direction.
All Knowing.
The mask speaks.
And it also took.
"Divine skill activation, counter measure initiated"
There he felt it, His lifespan stretched — not stolen, not reduced. Extended.
Ten years added to his existence.
Not as mercy.
As obligation.
"Initiating activiation"
He felt it immediately — the future lengthening, suffering prolonged, the end pushed farther away so that he would have more time to endure everything that came before it.
Prime didn't scream.
He endured.
Then he asked the real question.
Them.
The Abyssal Order unfolded before his mind — five concepts bound into form.
"Skill activated, counter measurement activation initiated"
Gaia — correction through preservation. Worlds culled to maintain equilibrium. Life saved by selective extinction.
But prime needed more, he used it more and more for the sake of winning.
"Skill activated, counter measurement activation initiated"
Calamity — inevitability incarnate. Disaster not as chaos, but as mathematical necessity.
---
Ashura — endless conflict. Progress through war. Evolution through attrition.
---
Paradox — contradiction weaponized. Futures collapsed by inconsistency.
---
Zero — absence. Not death, not void. Erasure.
For each answer, another decade was added.
Fifty years.
Fifty years of extended existence, not to live — but to remember.
Prime memorized everything. Patterns. Weaknesses. Interactions. What they would ignore. What they would prioritize. Where their philosophies overlapped — and where they clashed.
"Divine skill, all knowing, deactivated"
When the mask released him from the torement, he fell to one knee, breathing hard.
The others found him like that.
Omega knelt beside him. "What did you do?"
Prime only stared at omega, eyes steady despite the cost weighing heavy behind them. "I made sure none of you die guessing."
They didn't ask what it took.
They could see it in his posture.
From that moment on, Prime changed — not stronger, not brighter — but decisive. Orders were clearer. Movements intentional. Preparations precise. They waited, not blindly, but deliberately.
Tracking signatures. Monitoring distortions. Letting the Abyssal Order believe they were still observing.
Eventually, the air shifted.
Reality thinned.
Five presences aligned once more.
Prime stepped forward as the others formed beside him — united, ready, grounded in knowledge bought with years of suffering.
Across the fracture in existence, the Abyssal Order stood waiting.
This time, Prime did not hesitate.
This time, he knew.
And the space between them burned with the certainty that the next moment would change everything.