Chapter 40:) [Onesided Massacre]
Back on Earth's surface, in a city in the Philippines, a shadowy figure, Zero, wearing the same black cat hat, stood atop a tall building overlooking the metro. A corpse lay beside him, he had just finished it off-screen. A nightmarish being stepped into his presence to report.
"Lord Zero," it bowed before him. "We have completed our task and can begin the next phase shortly. What should we do next?" It spoke as if it did not even remember that the first wave had already been deployed.
Zero stared at his palm, opened and closed it. A sensation that his forty-three Fractureborn, including the three generals, had been wiped from existence, erased from history, and from his ability to recreate them.
"Do you remember your comrades?" he asked as the wind blew before them.
"What do you mean? Who?" the creature asked genuinely, its mind scrubbed clean of their memory by the unmaking properties of Voidflame.
Zero's expression remained unreadable. "Hmm... then it is confirmed. The second strategy failed. They failed to bring me the Hakurei bloodline." A pause. "It's not that it matters at the moment."
He looked out at the billions of people in the sprawling city below. "It should manage to stir the Flame within him. It is only a matter of time before he acts."
A thin smile crossed his face. "Losing them is not a setback, we still have legions of Billions of unbaptised FractureBorn and the ability to create more. Let them try. They will fail to change his worldview. And if he does change, they will suffer. For once he learns the true nature of that sealed Zoo, he will see what yokai and the people who reside there really mean. And when he does, he will revert to the tyranny he embodied before any of them ever knew him."
Zero finally looked back at the reporting Fractureborn before him. "Stick to the plan. The Curator has managed to temper their world's setting as planned. We do our jobs now. We pull back for now." His smile widened into an unhinged, knowing grin. "After all, this is the best reset I could've received in a while."
Zero turned his gaze to the sky, his expression a knowing smile.
"They arrive too soon..." he murmured, more to himself than to the creature behind him.
"Who was it, Lord Zero?" the Fractureborn asked.
Zero didn't turn. "Nothing special... The order of reality is just doing its balancing thing. Due to the fact that two fabric of existence predators are here- don't count the Curator, he's playing a different existence entirely." A pause. "As for the erased children, He will look through them. He always does in his prime. We need to set up a false location, a trail of breadcrumbs leading somewhere not ours." He finally turned to meet the creature gaze. "Let's go squash some insignificant insects."
Then he reached out, not toward the creature, but toward something else entirely, the fabric of the narrative itself. He pulled the manuscript, until his eyes filled the frame, staring directly—at YOU.
"Watchers. Come with me. I'll show you something cool."
In deep space outside the universe. A legion of advanced warships, eighteen sleek, divine vessels, hurtled through space, their hulls humming with the power of gods. They blurred past stars, their trajectory locked on a single universe: the one where Gensokyo resided, hidden behind its barrier.
Then, all at once, they stopped. Dead in their tracks. No deceleration. No warning. Just stillness, as if the universe itself had pressed pause.
"What's happening?! Report status!" a commander barked, his voice cracking with sudden unease.
"The machine stopped! Something is here!" another voice answered, panic bleeding through the static.
"We're heading to that universe for a reason! We just received a massive disruption in the fabric of existence coming from that direction— something is wrong, something is—"
"Weapons ready! All ships, battle stations!"
The eighteen warships rotated in perfect synchronization, their divine cannons sliding from their hulls with a low, resonant hum. They scanned the void. Searching. Searching.
Then: "One entity! Four o'clock from the legion's position!"
Every ship turned. Every weapon aimed. And there, hovering in the infinite darkness, was a single figure. A grinning humanoid, shadowy thing.
"I identify yourself!" the lead commander demanded, his voice amplified across the space.
"I don't need to. But you will all be my pawns. Submit to me, and I'll spare all of you. You Equilibrium part-timers... you're not worth the effort of a real fight."
Silence. Then, a laugh. One commander, then another, then another, until nearly all of them were laughing, their divine voices echoing across the fleet.
"Submit?! You've got some enormous balls claiming superiority out here, alien!"
"We are God's servants! The Equilibrium! We bow to no random drifter in the space!"
The shadowy figure didn't react. The grin remained, fixed and patient. "I am a man of my word. But alas..." The grin widened. "These insignificant insects will face the Anomaly Nightmare's fractured armies."
The laughter died. Instantly. The name hit the fleet like a physical blow. "Anomaly Nightmare?" a commander whispered, his voice suddenly small. "That one... that criminal... the one who's been destroying worlds, consuming pantheons, turning evil to his will..." Divine power surged through the warships' weapons, humming with desperate, terrified energy. "So you are Zero—"
"Too late."
Zero's arms shot out to both sides, his fingers curling into the fabric of existence itself. The space around him screamed, a soundless, reality-deep shriek, as he grabbed hold of something fundamental and pulled. The universe tore. Two separate rifts split open from where he was to over both sides of the warships', raw and bleeding with unstable light, and from within that wound poured a tide of nightmares, each one more nightmares than the last.
"Rune skill: Fractured Reality."
Five billion Fractureborn spilled into the space. They flooded and surrounded the warships', a sight of a living apocalypse of claws and teeth and glitching, hungry forms. The gods on the warships felt it before they saw it: a wave of dread so absolute it turned their divine blood cold.
"My minions!" Zero's voice echoed across the space, and the Fractureborn shrieked in unison, a sound of excitement, of hunger, of joy. "Tear them apart! Leave one alive!"
The Fractureborn hit the fleet like a tsunami of living nightmare.
Gods screamed. Divine beams lanced through the darkness, desperate, wild shots that should have vaporized anything they touched. But the Fractureborn didn't dodge. They deflected it. The beams bent out their way and passed through as if the gods were firing a pitch ball into the batter. And then the Fractureborn were in their proximity.
They tore through the hulls like wet paper. Metal screamed. Gods screamed louder. The Fractureborn pulled them from their ships in pieces, limbs wrenched from sockets, torsos ripped open, divine blood sprayed the space in clouds. Organs floated past the viewports, still pulsing with fading divine light. Flesh and bone scattered like confetti at a parade of death. The warships, those magnificent vessels of divine engineering, were shredded apart.
Zero spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the carnage. He inhaled deeply, a long, slow, savoring breath. "Yes... Scream! You insignificant insects are nothing! Your divinity means nothing! Your Equilibrium means nothing! You are meat, and meat exists to be devoured!"
He turned his head to the side. Slowly. Deliberately. Until his eyes locked onto the manuscript, onto—YOU.
"It's cool isn't it, Watchers? His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Can you smell the blood of the gods out there? Can you taste their fear? It's sweet, isn't it?" He began to laugh, a low, guttural sound that built and built, climbing in pitch as well as volume until it was a full, maniacal howl. His body shook with it. His eyes turned to the slaughter.
When the laughter finally subsided. The fleet was gone. Eighteen warships reduced to drifting debris and cooling divine ichor. And in the center of the wreckage, one god remained.
He was on his knees. Not by choice, two Fractureborn held him in place, their claws hooked through his shoulders. His divine suit was drenched in the blood of his comrades, his body trembling. His eyes were wide, unseeing, the eyes of a man who had just watched his entire world die in the span of minutes. Tears streamed down his face, mixing with the blood. He was crying, sobbing, really, the kind of crying that consumes the whole body.
Zero approached slowly. The Fractureborn parted before him. When he reached the god, he crouched down to eye level, studying the broken face with genuine curiosity.
"Your name."
The god's mouth opened. A wet, strangled sound emerged, something between a whimper and a scream. He tried again. "L-Lorxes..."
"Lorxes." Zero repeated the name slowly. "Very well, Lorxes." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to something almost gentle. "You have family, don't you? A wife, perhaps? Children?"
Lorxes's face went white. He understood what Zero meant. "PLEASE! STOP! HAVE MERCY ON MY FAMILY! I BEG OF YOU!"
Zero snickered. "I gave you all the mercy option, Lorxes. Every single one of you. Submit and live. Resist and die. And what did you do? You laughed." He straightened up, looking down at the sobbing god. "When you are given an option, Lorxes... take it seriously." A pause. "I want no outsiders meddling in my ultimate plan, Lorxes. That's why all of you must die. Your higher ups won't notice you for a year and all your people are gone. And that's a good enough window for me. I'll make sure the Curator will stop them in their tracks, otherwise his plans will fail with both of us."
Another paused. The grin returned, wider than before.
"Let's go to your planet. I will tear them apart in front of you."
The scene shifts to a planet that had been beautiful once. Advanced skyscrapers surpassed the clouds, their surfaces gleaming with light. Flying cars flew between them in an elegant path of traffic. Parks and gardens sprawled across the lower levels, cultivated over millennia by a civilization that had known nothing but peace.
Now it burned.
The cities had collapsed in on themselves, their gleaming towers toppled like dominoes. The ground was a mosaic of fire and ash. The sky, once a serene lavender, was now filled with smoke and the endless, chittering forms of Fractureborn. They filled the atmosphere from horizon to horizon, billions of them, their glitching bodies blocking out the sun. Some tore through the streets below, hunting the survivors who fled screaming through the ruins. Others simply hovered, watching, waiting, as if the destruction of an entire civilization was merely a performance.
Atop the highest remaining skyscraper, a single spire that had somehow survived the initial assault, Lorxes was forced to his knees. Fractureborn held him in place, their claws digging into his divine flesh just enough to remind him that escape was impossible. Zero stood beside him, one hand resting casually on Lorxes's shoulder.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Zero murmured. "The way it all comes apart. You spend millennia building something, and it takes me an afternoon to destroy it."
Lorxes couldn't speak. Couldn't think. The only thing that escaped his mouth was a single phrase, repeated over and over, each iteration more broken than the last:
"PLEASE... STOP... PLEASE... STOP... PLEASE... STOP... PLEASE... STOP... PLEASE... STOP... PLEASE... STOP... PLEASE... STOP... PLEASE... STOP..."
Zero closed his eyes, tilting his head back as if listening to a symphony. "Mhmm yes... Continue. That's the sound. Do you hear it, Lorxes? That's the sound of a god learning that he was never really a god at all."
Then the screaming started below. Not the distant screams of a dying city, close screams. Familiar screams.
A Fractureborn ascended to the rooftop, dragging two figures in its wake. The first was a woman, her divine radiance barely clinging to her form, her dress torn, her face a mask of terror. The second was a child, a girl, no older than ten in human terms, her small fists beating uselessly against the Fractureborn's glitching hide.
"PAPA! PAPA, HELP ME! PAPA!"
Lorxes's eyes snapped into focus for the first time since the slaughter began. "NO! NOT THEM! PLEASE, I'LL DO ANYTHING! I'LL SUBMIT! I'LL BOW! I'LL—"
"You'll watch." Zero's voice was ice. He nodded to the Fractureborn holding Lorxes, and the creature forced the god's head up. "You denied my mercy, Lorxes. Now you receive my attention. There's a difference."
He walked toward the woman. His footsteps were unhurried. The child thrashed and screamed, her divine power flickering uselessly, she was too young, too untrained, too weak. Zero paused beside her, looking down at the small, struggling form.
"Your daughter, I assume? She has your eyes."
"STOP!!!! LET GO OF MY MOTHER, YOU MONSTER!!!!" the child shrieked, her voice raw with fury and terror.
Zero didn't turn to face her, but he answered anyway. "Kid. I'm no monster." He reached out and closed his hand around the mother's throat. She gasped, her hands flying up to claw at his grip, her divine strength useless against the Anomaly Nightmare. "A monster acts on instinct. A monster doesn't know the difference between good and evil, they always blame it on 'sentimentality'. I do. I know exactly what I'm doing. I know it's wrong. And I do it anyway."
He lifted the mother off the ground with one hand. She choked, her legs kicking uselessly in the air. The child screamed louder, her voice cracking. Lorxes sobbed, his body convulsing against the Fractureborn's grip.
"That's why I'm not a monster, kid." Zero continued. "I am evil, not the embodiment of evil, just plain evil. There's a difference. Monsters don't choose. I chose. I chose to break every ethical standard that ever existed. I chose to eat the flesh of gods and steal their power. I chose to do this, over and over until I got it right. I chose this. Because sometimes, you people wouldn't remember what I do." He glanced at the child, his grin returning. "And that's why humans are superior to gods. Because a human, a real human, one who's willing to do what it takes, can become anything. Even this. Like what I've done."
He turned back to Lorxes, raising the woman higher. "Now then. Lorxes, I believe I made you a promise."
"Stop..." Lorxes whispered, his voice barely audible. "Please..."
Zero's grin stretched to its absolute limit. "I hereby bless you, Lorxes. With the image of your wife. In half."
His hands moved. The sound was wet and terrible and slow. The woman's body came apart slowly and in a spray of divine ichor, her organs spilling across the rooftop in a glistening cascade. Her legs finally dropped to one side. Her torso to the other. The Fractureborn idly caught a falling organ and examined it with something like curiosity.
The child's scream was not a sound. It was a wound in the air itself. She collapsed, her legs giving out, her small body heaving with sobs that just sounded broken.
Lorxes didn't scream nor did he sob. He just simply stopped. His eyes remained open, fixed on the remains of his wife, but the light behind them had gone out. His spirit died in that moment, though his body would linger a few seconds more.
Zero tossed the remains aside. He turned to the child.
"COME ON! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, MONSTER!!" She was on her feet now, her tiny fists clenched, her face covered with tears and snot and the faint, fading glow of her mother's divine blood. "YOU LIKE KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE, RIGHT?! THEN FIGHT ME!! FIGHT ME!!"
Zero let out a delighted laugh. "Look at that fire. Look at that spirit. That's the look of the 'I can beat you no matter what' troupe." He crouched down to her level, his grin softening. "Kid, I spare the weak. I spare the helpless. I spare the ones who never had a chance. Weak are easier to control than willed warriors." A pause. "But I discriminate against gods. And you, little one... you're a god in a child's body, and a willed warrior. So there's no exception for you."
He straightened. His hand rose.
"Now die."
His arm shot forward. His fingers pierced her chest like a blade through wet paper. The child's eyes flew wide, not with pain, not yet, but with the incomprehension of a being too young to understand that death had already arrived. Zero's hand closed around her heart and pulled. It came free with a wet, sucking sound, still beating in his palm.
The child was still aware. Still alive. Still watching. And fell to lay to her side on the ground. Her fading vision saw Zero turn to her father, saw him force Lorxes's mouth open, saw him push the still-beating heart past the god's lips.
"Eat, Lorxes. This is your daughter's heart. The last piece of her that will ever exist. Don't waste it."
The child's final thought, as the darkness closed in, was not a prayer. Not a plea. It was a curse, simple and absolute: "I HATE YOU."
She died with it on her lips.
Zero watched Lorxes chew. He watched the god's hollowed eyes, the motion of his jaw, the trickle of his daughter's divine blood running down his chin. And he smiled.
"When you see Satan," Zero said softly, "tell him I said hello. And tell Jesus..." He leaned close to Lorxes's ear. "Tell Jesus that when Zero dies, if Zero dies, I'm coming for both of them next. Heaven. Hell. None of it is safe from me. Just like him."
He raised his hand to deliver the final blow. But before he could strike, Lorxes's body began to glow. His atoms vibrated, accelerated, and then, in a sudden, violent, visceral explosion, he came apart. The rooftop was painted with what remained of him.
Zero sighed. The irritation in his voice was genuine. "What is it, Curator?"
|[INITIALIZING! OVERRIDE CHAPTER!]|
Chapter 40: The Remaining Legend he was part of.
In the Sand world where Nowa and Yukari were before, the wind howled, whipping dust against the obsidian hull of the sleek spacecraft. A man with a glowing blue heart crystal in his chest stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the desert.
"That fucking ugly mutt was here," Chris stated, his voice a low grumble.
He crouched, on his arm, formed slowly, crystallized into a heavy mechanical arm, a masterpiece of rune-etched steel and humming conduits, extending to scan a section of the desert floor. It was unnaturally smooth, a perfect straight grid that stood out against the wind-sculpted dunes. "Trace of Voidflame. A freakin' clean erasure."
"The signature is a day old," a calm voice added. Shin approached, his movements silent. His eyes scanned the horizon. "The signature readings say's a confrontation, but the outcome was... not to kill. He neutralized a threat without total annihilation. Very unusual for him in his current state." Shin's gaze met Chris's. "Could he have been recruited?"
A thunder of approaching footsteps cut through their analysis. From the distance, a colossal, four-legged beast charged toward them, kicking up dust. As it closed the distance, its form dissolved in a grotesque, beautiful flow of reconfiguring biomass. Bones crackled and reshaped, fur retracted into pale skin, and the monstrous head smoothed into the grinning, wild-eyed face of a young woman who landed in a skid before them.
"Chris! Aniki!" Kai chirped, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I found blood! Not his, but a woman's! It's scared and begging and smells like... like edges! Portal edges! Come on!" Without waiting, she spun and sprinted back the way she came.
Chris let out a long-suffering sigh, running a hand over his face. "That better not be another fucking one of her trollolo type shit."
"Let her be this time," Shin replied, a ghost of a smile touching his lips as they followed the girl's path.
They found her crouched over a single, dried drop of blood that turned into a sandstone, her head leaned very close. "See? Tiny. But here!."
Shin knelt. He pressed a single finger to the stain. A wisp of darkness, cold and precise, leaked from his fingertype, tasting the memory trapped within.
"Kai is correct," he confirmed, opening his eyes. "Female. Profoundly wounded. The psychic impression is saturated with terror, desperation... and a potent spatial manipulation ability. She was fleeing when she arrived bleeding here."
Chris crouched, his crystalized mechanical hand extending a delicate tool that carefully scooped the sample. The substance was drawn into a port on his wrist, and the arm hummed, internal processors whirring to life. "Alright mother fucker. Let's see who the fuck you are."
A holographic screen flickered into existence above his forearm, a storm of genetic code and fragmented psychic impressions. The data swirled, a chaotic ballet of light and information, before it suddenly converged, sharpening into a ghostly, three-dimensional image.
It was a woman. Elegant, pale, with long cascades of blonde hair, her dress torn and stained. Her eyes, wide with a mix of agony and sheer will, were fixed on something beyond the viewer. One hand was clamped to a grievous wound on her side, blood seeping through her fingers—it was Yukari Yakumo—though they did not yet know her name. And behind her, the very air was tearing open, a rift of ink-black and violent violet forced glitching energy spiraled, the gateway she had forced into being in her final, desperate act.
A fierce, triumphant grin split Chris's face. He punched the air. "Gotcha! That's our shit hole ticket. We find her, we find our shit ass brothar."
Shin added. "A blonde woman huh? I feel like there's an underlying assumption of—"
Chris cut Shin off with a hearty laugh. "What are you saying man? That ugly mutt can't even get himself a girlfriend other than his mum, let alone does that troupe!"
"They gunna have segs! Tons of segs! I bet you that!" Kai happily bounced on her feet as she added.
Chris and Shin held their faces with an exasperated sigh. Then Chris added as he let go and looked at Kai.
"There's already a fucking incestification happening between the two of you." Then a low voice of relief. "...Well, if there is. It should help him heal up those old scars. I doubt it would be easy for him."
The celebration was cut short by a low, growing rumble that vibrated through the hard-packed earth. All three heads snapped toward the horizon. A dust cloud was rising, and beneath it, a stampede of local fauna, an enormous herd of centipedes, each the size of a ground truck, their countless legs shifting the desert into a storm as they barreled directly toward the spacecraft.
Kai didn't hesitate. She leaped in front of the others, a predatory snarl twisting her features. With a wet, tearing sound, both her arms elongated and shifted, bones reforging into monstrous, scythe-like biomass claws. "Heh. Dinner time!"
Shin sighed. A blade of solidified shadow manifested then in a single motion, unsheathed it like a sheathed blade out of tin air. "Careful, Kai. Don't taint the meat with too much adrenaline. It ruins the flavor."
Chris, meanwhile, simply took a few steps back. Parts of his mechanical arm reconfigured with a series of sharp clicks and hydraulic hisses, folding and expanding and produced into a bizarre but sturdy-looking chair. He sat down, crossing his legs. "Well, at least the menu's fuckin decided."
Kai didn't glance back, her focus entirely on the oncoming horde. "Just thin out the herds, Aniki!" she yelled, and then she was gone, a blur of feral motion, launching herself forward not on two legs, but on all fours, her claw-arms and feet propelling her like a wolf.
Shin offered a calm nod to Chris, then his form dissolved, sinking into the pool of darkness Kai's own shadow cast in the desert sun.
Kai hit the front line of the centipede horde like a biological meteor. She became a zigzagging vortex of destruction, her biomass claws shearing through armor with wet, crunching sounds. The wounds she inflicted were not clean cuts, but brutal, tearing gouges that spilled pale, sticky fluid across the sand. Eleven of the massive creatures shuddered and collapsed in her initial pass before she gathered herself and launched into a high arc above the seething mass.
Mid-air, her back contorted. With a sound like tearing leather, four new limbs, sharp, spider-like appendages, erupted from her shoulders and lanced downward, impaling four more bigger variants centipedes with pinpoint accuracy, pinning their thrashing forms to the desert floor. It was the perfect signal.
From the pool of shadow directly beneath Kai, Shin emerged. Not from the ground, but from her own silhouette cast upon the dying centipedes. His upper torso dipped out first, his shadow blade already in an unsheathing attack motion. He didn't leap or dash; he simply flowed through the remaining horde in a series of impossibly fast, clean zigzags. Where Kai was chaos and carnage, Shin was silent, surgical precision. Each movement of his blade was a single, perfect stroke, and with each pass, another centipede simply fell apart, neatly sectioned, its nervous system severed before it could even register the attack.
In the span of three heartbeats, the thunderous stampede was replaced by the quiet gurgling of dying beasts and the settling dust. Shin stood calmly amidst the carnage, sheathing his shadow blade in a gesture that made the weapon sheathed in the air and slowly faded.
"Kai, come out now," He called out.
On cue, the carapace of the largest centipede bulged and then burst open. Kai erupted from the stomach cavity, drenched in blood, a wild, triumphant grin splitting her face.
"Ha! I slew more than you, Aniki!" Kai gleamed, shaking the gore from her hair. "You're getting slow! You owe me a kiss!"
Shin didn't dignify her taunt with a direct response, merely flicking a stray bit of ichor from his sleeve with a look of mild annoyance. "Your count is inaccurate as always. You disabled fifteen, Kai. I eliminated twenty-nine. The debt is—"
He finally glanced towards her. Kai was already a blur of motion. Before his shadow-walker reflexes could kick in, she was on him, her hands gripping his jacket, her lips meeting his in a victorious, gore-smeared kiss. Shin flinched, then, with a sigh of profound resignation, he gave up and kissed her back.
AHEM.
The sound that erupted from Chris. He glared at them, his expression utter exasperation.
"Alright, you two incest soul-cambions," he grumbled, rising from his improvised chair. "Can you save the flirting for a fucking day that isn't fucking today? It's hurting my goddamn feelings. I can't kiss my robowaifu, she's a whole fuckin multiverse away." He gestured vaguely at the barren sky. "Bruh."
Kai broke the kiss with a giggle, utterly shameless.
"So," Chris said. "How's the meat?"
Shin, now composed, crouched by a clean section of centipede carapace. He carved a small sample with a shadow-formed dagger and took a bite. "Good. Texture and flavor profile are similar to chicken meat. Could use some cooking and seasoning." He then set to work with terrifying efficiency. His shadow dagger became a blur, disassembling the colossal corpses with the precision of a master butcher. In moments, the battlefield was cleared, replaced by neatly stacked, manageable cuts of meat. The sight of the calm, composed Shin effortlessly holding a mountain of meat that dwarfed him was comically unreal.
He walked back towards the ship, the gigantic haul held aloft. Kai rode on top of the pile, grinning from ear to ear.
Then the ground rumbled again. Not a swarm this time, but a single centipede, towering into the sky, barreling down on them with furious, earth-shaking steps. The trio looked at the sky-high beast with not a hint of surprise.
"Looks like Mommy ain't so happy about this shit." Chris grinned.
He stepped forward. His crystallized mechanical arm shattered, no, unfolded, the pieces reconfiguring in a cascade of blue light. The same happened to his other arm. Both limbs merged, expanded, and transformed into a crystallized rune-railgun-cannon that completely overshadowed his form. It hummed dangerously, blue energy drawn from the crystal heart in his chest, flowing into the rune-weapon.
"Alright, baby. Time to test if my ability and rune-skill combination still works in this goddamn universe."
He angled the cannon skyward, the barrel tracking the colossal beast. His grin widened.
"EAT SHIT, MOTHERFUCKER!"
The weapon fired. A vaporizing lance of blue energy, the size of a "Mount Everest", blasted across the desert. It connected with the centipede's charging form, and the beast simply ended. No explosion. No remains. Just a sudden, silent absence where a living mountain had been. A trench of vaporized sand stretched to the horizon, steam rising from the scorched sand-world.
From Chris's body, steam vented like an engine cooling after an overclock. The rune-railgun shattered back into his standard arms, one normal hand, one crystallized mechanical rune-limb. The blue light faded.
Kai let out a friendly scoff. "That was unnecessarily too much. What a show-off."
"God riddance alright!" Chris let a smile touch his lips, turning to them once more. "This Rune-tech violation still fucking works. Time for dinner—"
A sharp, urgent beep blared from his mechanical arm. The smile vanished.
His fingers flew across the glowing interface, his eyes scanning new data.
"A massive Voidflame signature just released. Concentrated, like a final fuck-you. But,"
Shin arrived with the meat, his expression turning serious. "But?" he repeated, sensing the problem in Chris's tone.
Chris looked up, his gaze meeting Shin's. "But it's in some sort of a fucking walled garden. A reality with the doors welded shut from the inside out. We can't just knock in." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Fucking hell. What did that idiot get himself trapped in this time?"
"Well," Kai chirped from her meaty perch, rolling onto her side. "At least we know Nowa's still alive and kicking. We just have to find that woman, right?"
"Yeah," Chris sighed, a dry laugh escaping him. "That fucking mutt, is about to give me grey hairs. Thank god I can't actually lose any hair." His laughter, a mix of fondness and sheer frustration, echoed across the sand world.
They were close. But a locked dimension was a chasm they couldn't yet cross. The reunion was inevitable, but the path had just become infinitely more complicated.