Chapter — Touch Me
Discordia moved first.
Veydras's hand rose.
The fist reached him.
Then destabilized.
Not disappeared.
Its relationship with a single stable shape began failing.
Discordia's knuckles became several contradictory structures.
Veydras stepped between them.
His fingers almost touched her wrist.
Discordia pulled back.
Veydras followed.
The ground beneath every step whitened.
Cracked.
Lost agreement.
Noctis stared.
"He's overclocking."
A number appeared.
ONTOLOGICAL DESTABILIZATION: 100%
Veydras accelerated.
Discordia struck.
He turned aside.
Her fist grazed his coat.
Half of it ceased agreeing with the rest of the garment and fell away in mismatched fragments.
Veydras did not look.
121%.
Discordia attacked again.
Veydras caught the conceptual stability of the space beside the strike and destabilized it.
The local distance failed.
Her fist arrived several centimeters away from where its own movement expected it.
Veydras stepped in.
His palm approached her chest.
Discordia's Chaos reacted.
Three versions of her occupied the contact.
Veydras touched none.
He withdrew before the contradiction could fold his hand into the wrong target.
149%.
Discordia tilted her head.
Recognition had begun replacing emptiness in her eyes.
Veydras saw it.
"So you can learn."
Discordia spoke.
"So can you."
Her voice was clearer now.
Veydras's eyes narrowed.
She disappeared from his front.
He turned.
Too slow.
Discordia's palm struck his spine.
Veydras flew.
Noctis moved.
"Recompense!"
The cost of the impact shifted.
A distant section of ruined battlefield collapsed in Veydras's place.
Veydras hit the ground anyway.
Hard.
Noctis had taken the fatal portion.
Not all of it.
Veydras rose.
Blood ran from his mouth.
Discordia looked at Noctis.
Veydras stepped between them.
"No."
Discordia looked back at him.
He smiled.
There was nothing pleasant in it.
"You already have one."
Eris heard him.
Her face crumpled.
Veydras's output climbed.
185%.
The old threshold.
His skin began losing clean edges.
Noctis saw it.
"Stop there."
Veydras did not.
203%.
His fingertips flickered.
Not visually.
Existentially.
For a fraction of a second, his index finger possessed no agreed length.
Then it returned.
241%.
Discordia's expression changed.
Not fear.
Attention.
Veydras laughed once.
"Good."
He walked toward her.
"You finally noticed me."
Discordia raised one hand.
Chaos unfolded.
Not Karma's Chaos.
Karma had selected possibilities.
Continued consequences.
Held contradictions long enough to exploit them.
This was older.
Around Discordia, the distinction between those techniques stopped mattering.
Possibility behaved like memory.
Memory behaved like intention.
An attack that had not happened became useful evidence for one that had.
A consequence existed before either combatant agreed upon its cause.
Noctis's calculations collapsed.
Battle Omniscience inside Eris went silent.
Not wrong.
Silent.
It had learned.
Veydras kept walking.
Discordia spoke.
"You are unstable."
Veydras looked at his bare hands.
"Yes."
"You were unstable before you arrived."
His smile disappeared.
"Yes."
Something in Discordia's gaze sharpened.
Old recognition.
Not of Veydras.
Something beneath him.
Something associated with what his hands were.
Veydras noticed.
"What?"
Discordia said nothing.
He accelerated.
271%.
Blood appeared beneath his fingernails.
The instability began traveling backward into his own arms.
His power was no longer merely attacking the world.
It was becoming difficult to prove where Veydras ended and the destabilization began.
Noctis shouted, "VEYDRAS!"
He kept going.
Discordia punched.
Veydras reached.
Their attacks crossed.
Discordia's fist struck his ribs.
Several broke.
Veydras's index finger touched her shoulder.
For the first time—
Discordia flickered.
Not moved.
Not dodged.
Flickered.
The red surrounding her broke into pieces.
One Chaotic current forgot that it belonged to another.
Her shoulder lost agreement with the position beneath it.
Discordia stepped back.
Silence.
Veydras looked at her.
Blood between his teeth.
"There."
Discordia stared at the place he had touched.
Veydras raised his hand.
"You can come apart."
Her eyes lifted.
Veydras's output climbed again.
289%.
Noctis stopped moving.
He knew the next number.
He had seen it in records.
He had seen what numbers like that did to people who believed percentages were merely arithmetic.
"Veydras."
No response.
Eris lifted her head.
She saw him standing between Discordia and everyone else.
Saw the blood.
Saw the uncovered hands.
Saw what he was about to do.
Her lips moved.
Don't.
No voice followed.
Veydras looked back anyway.
He saw her.
One arm.
Broken body.
Open wound beside the skull.
Crying.
Still alive because War refused to understand mercy.
Veydras turned back.
The number changed.
303%.
Everything touching his existence reacted.
The ground beneath him forgot its own structural history.
Air stopped agreeing on density.
Distance around his hands acquired fractures.
The outline of his body loosened.
Noctis shouted his name.
Veydras brought both hands together.
Not touching.
Never touching.
A trembling interval remained between his palms.
He destabilized that too.
The gap collapsed into something that could no longer prove it had ever separated them.
Power folded inward.
Discordia's face changed.
Veydras spoke.
"Overclocked."
The Theater whitened beneath his feet.
"Ontological Destabilization."
Discordia raised both hands.
Chaos gathered.
Veydras looked directly at the person reality had once dismantled into an energy.
He understood the mistake everyone else had been making.
Discordia was older than this Archaverse.
Older than the Aetherial Interstice.
Older than the structures against which Fault Absolute had been designed.
So he did not target her age.
Did not target Chaos.
Did not target the concept that had been modeled after her.
He targeted one much smaller fact.
The fact that mattered now.
Discordia was here.
In this Theater.
In this manifestation.
Stable enough to hurt Eris.
Stable enough to obey Karma's command.
Stable enough to act.
Veydras smiled.
"Advanced Technique."
Discordia's eyes widened.
"Fault Absolute."
His hand reached for her face.
"First Error."
Discordia moved.
Veydras moved faster.
His fingertip touched her forehead.
The Theater disappeared beneath white.
For a fraction of a moment—
Discordia's expression contained something no one had seen since her awakening.
Not pain.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
She looked at Veydras.
Then at his hand.
And whispered a word nobody else understood.
Veydras heard it.
His face changed.
Discordia smiled.
And the woman reality had used to invent Chaos—
began to come apart.