It is not wind or force.
A whole new rule dropped into reality.
Glass buckled.
Pavement rippled.
Responders hit the ground in a domino of curses and clattering gear.
Halden nearly lost his footing—his coat snapping back like someone grabbed it mid-run, eyes wide as the air compressed around us.
Rafe braced against a flipped barrier, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth.
And me?
I just… stood there.
My coat fluttered.
My halo brightened by a hair.
That's it.
The Codex entity stepped through the shimmer at the end of the street—tall, angular, wrong in all the ways corrupted constructs always are.
Its arms unfolded like blades sliding out of a machine.
Glyphs crawled across its skin, glitching, rep weairing, glitching again.
It didn't roar.
It pinged, a hollow digital echo that made every nearby drone malfunction at once.
[ Threat Elevated. ]
[ Designation: Intermediate Dimensional Unit. ]
[ Behavioral Pattern: Aggressive-Class. ]
My eye twitched.
"Yeah, I kinda figured that, buddy."
The entity crouched.
Lines gathered along its arms like charging rails.
Rafe yelled something—
"BENEDICT, MOVE!"
—right as a beam ripped toward me.
Thin. Straight. Fast enough to tear the street in half.
I didn't dodge.
I didn't posture.
I just stepped forward once.
The beam hit the ground behind me.
A delayed explosion thundered, sending a geyser of asphalt into the sky.
Rafe stared at me like I cheated physics.
Halden grabbed the wall.
The Codex entity froze.
Its glyphs spiked in error symbols.
Like its brain was asking:
"Why didn't that hit?"
[ Analysis: Spatial fold executed subconsciously. ]
[ Note: Efficiency increasing. ]
I grinned.
"Oh? Getting fancy on your own now?"
The system ignored the joke. Of course.
The entity lunged—four limbs skittering across concrete in a blur.
Too fast for responders.
Too wrong for normal eyesight.
A digital blur with teeth.
I swung my staff with one hand.
A clean, punk-simple arc.
CRACK.
The monster broke sideways into a parked bus—metal screaming as it caved inward.
The bus folded like paper around its body.
Kids watching from a rooftop screamed "HOLY—!" before their parents yanked them back.
The Codex entity peeled itself out of the wreck and screeched.
Not a normal screech.
The kind that makes air vibrate like someone plucked a nerve.
Halden staggered backward, covering his ears.
Rafe didn't move—he watched me almost too closely, like he was reading the scene for the hundredth sign that none of this made sense.
The entity's tail unfurled—razor-thin, glowing with unstable code.
It shot out.
Fast.
Clean.
Straight for Halden.
He froze.
I didn't.
One flash-step.
One hand.
I caught the tail between two fingers.
Literally.
Halden blinked at me like he forgot how to process sight.
I raised my brow.
"Hey. Don't stab my ride home."
The tail glitched violently, trying to recompute why its lethal edge was being held like a spaghetti noodle.
I squeezed.
Light fractured down its length.
The tail shattered like a glass whip.
The Codex entity reeled back, screech tearing the sky again.
[ Advisory:
Dimensional structure destabilizing.
Sinful energy threshold sufficient.
User may initiate Dominicus Protocol. ]
My smile dropped.
"…Already?"
[ Affirmative. ]
The air around me thickened—halo sharpening into a bright radius.
Rafe whispered, barely audible:
"He's charging something…"
Halden felt it too—his breath locked up, his knees nearly buckling.
The Codex entity backed away.
For the first time—
it hesitated.
Code flickered across its carapace like it was scanning for exits that didn't exist.
I lifted my staff.
The ground dimmed.
The lights flickered.
Even the breach pulse seemed to slow.
My voice dropped—
not loud, not angry.
Just absolute.
"Hora Dominicus."
A ripple of reality bent outward, soft at first—
then heavy enough to distort the air around me.
The Codex entity screeched, throwing itself forward in panic—
I stepped through it.
A single motion.
Clean.
Uncluttered.
No wasted flash.
My staff pierced its core—
straight through the chest—
like skewering a glitch trying to pretend it was alive.
"Salve et Rex."
The entity convulsed as radiant code burst inside it, shredding its corrupted lattice from within.
Glyphs ruptured like boiling ink.
Its limbs failed.
Its tail crumbled.
Its form sagged into light and ash as its dimension tether burned out.
I whispered the final line.
"Est Luci Sacramentum."
White rays carved upward in a pillar—
not explosive,
not loud—
just clean.
When the light faded, nothing remained.
Not a corpse.
Not even dust.
Just a faint shimmer where something wrong had been corrected.
Silence rolled across the street.
Halden stared at the empty space.
Rafe wiped a shaking hand across his mouth.
Responders lowered their weapons one by one.
A kid in a nearby balcony whispered:
"…bro finished it like a cutscene…"
I turned, spinning my staff once.
"Warm-up's finally over."
The breach overhead pulsed.
Hard.
A new roar rolled through the clouds—
—low
—massive
—angry.
Something bigger was coming.
Rafe's voice shook:
"That's… not a micro-rift anymore."
Halden's face drained.
"We need the whole Directorate—now—"
I cracked my neck.
"Nah. You need me."
I raised my staff as the sky tore wider.
And smiled.