The city never slept.
But that night—
it listened.
Kayan felt it before Lyra spoke. A subtle wrongness crawling along the edges of existence, like a sound just below hearing. The probability flow beneath the overlook slowed further, thickening into something viscous.
"This isn't the city," Lyra whispered. "This is external interference."
The Civic Anchor pulsed once.
Then again.
Its light flickered.
That had never happened before.
People began to panic—not loudly, but carefully. Citizens retreated indoors. Wardens repositioned themselves around structural convergence points. The city wasn't reacting emotionally.
It was preparing.
Kayan's chest tightened.
From beyond the city's outer probability shell, something pushed inward.
Not a body.
Not a mind.
A possibility that refused to collapse.
The air tore open above a distant district—not ripping, but unfolding. Like a page being turned the wrong way. From the fold emerged a shape that refused definition.
It changed every time Kayan tried to focus on it.
A mass of overlapping forms: bone, shadow, light, memory. Its surface reflected thoughts instead of light. As it descended, the ground beneath it turned unstable, buildings flickering between states of ruin and completion.
A Chaos Entity.
Lyra swore. "A Devourer-class manifestation. It slipped through during the recalibration."
Sirens escalated.
This time—real alarms.
Wardens engaged, projecting probability barriers that bent and warped under pressure. Some held. Some didn't.
The entity touched one.
The barrier didn't shatter.
It aged.
Centuries passed across its surface in an instant, and then it collapsed into dust.
Kayan's heart pounded.
"What does it want?" he asked.
Lyra's voice was tight. "Nothing. It doesn't hunt for goals."
She looked at him.
"It hunts for certainty."
The creature turned.
Not with eyes.
With attention.
Its focus slid across the city… and stopped.
On Kayan.
The void inside him reacted violently.
Not fear.
Recognition.
"It sees me," Kayan whispered.
"Yes," Lyra said. "Because you're the only thing here it can't consume."
The Chaos Entity surged forward, warping space as it moved. Wardens were thrown aside like afterthoughts. Probability constructs failed in cascading patterns.
Lyra grabbed Kayan's arm. "We need to leave—now!"
"No," Kayan said.
She froze.
"If I run," he continued, eyes locked on the approaching impossibility, "it'll keep coming. Through cities. Through layers."
The entity was close enough now that the world around it screamed silently. People collapsed, not injured—overwritten.
Lyra stared at him. "Kayan, you don't know what erasing something like that will—"
"I know," he said quietly. "It'll leave a gap."
The void expanded.
Not explosively.
Deliberately.
Kayan stepped forward.
For the first time, he didn't erase an outcome.
He erased a presence.
The space where the Chaos Entity existed… flattened.
No light.
No sound.
No aftermath.
Just absence.
The city lurched violently. Buildings screamed as probability rushed to fill the gap. The Civic Anchor flared, barely compensating.
When the void contracted back into Kayan, he dropped to one knee, gasping.
The entity was gone.
Not destroyed.
Denied.
Silence fell.
Lyra rushed to him. "Kayan—!"
"I'm okay," he lied.
Something burned in his chest now.
Not pain.
A mark.
Far beyond the city, in the Chaos Sea itself, something vast shifted.
The Devourers had felt the wound.
And for the first time since existence began—
They knew where the Zero was.