The building didn't finish collapsing.
It stopped.
Concrete hung in the air, frozen mid-fall. Fire bent sideways, stretched into ribbons of light. Shockwaves that should have torn the structure apart flattened into silent pressure, as if reality itself had been grabbed by the throat.
Inferius felt it all at once.
The weight.
The wrongness.
Netoshka staggered, blood running from her nose as her perception tried to auto-correct something that refused to be categorized.
"This—" Circe choked, clutching her head.
"This isn't an anomaly. It's not even an entity. It's—"
The air split.
Not tore.
Not shattered.
Split.
Like a seam being opened.
She stepped out of it.
Half military, half civilian attire—fabric mismatched, layered like she didn't care which era she borrowed from. Short green hair, cut unevenly. Reddish Pink eyes that looked similar to Netoshka's, but more Malevolent as it reflected no light, only depth.
She looked young.
She felt infinite.
The temperature dropped instantly as BlightMist-9—the Red Gas—rolled through the streets beyond the broken walls. Sirens screamed in the distance. Civilians ran. Some fell. Some never made it two steps before their bodies locked and collapsed.
Malithra inhaled.
The gas recoiled from her.
Not repelled.
Obedient.
Netoshka raised her weapon.
It did nothing.
The HUD glitched. The targeting reticle fractured into unreadable symbols. Her glitch reflex tried to activate—
—and was overridden.
Malithra turned her head slightly.
Her gaze landed on Netoshka.
"Oh," she said softly.
"So you do exist."
That voice.
The bunker.
The nightmare.
The fall.
The thing that jumped her from the dark.
Netoshka's spine went cold.
"You," she whispered.
Malithra smiled.
Recognition.
Soldiers poured in from every corridor—Synarchy forces, emergency response units, mechanized squads firing on instinct.
Malithra didn't move.
She blinked.
The first line of soldiers folded in half.
Not exploded.
Not burned.
Folded—like paper crushed by invisible hands.
The next squad opened fire.
She walked forward.
Bullets froze midair and fell, liquefied, pooling at her feet. She reached out and touched one soldier's helmet.
He vanished.
No blood.
No remains.
Just absence.
Panic detonated across the battlefield.
Netoshka shouted orders that no longer mattered.
Malithra moved.
She didn't run.
She appeared.
One place—then another—then everywhere.
Bodies fell without wounds. Heads separated from spines without cuts. Entire platoons erased between heartbeats.
She wasn't fighting.
She was editing.
From the far end of the chamber, Malicer's voice rang out, amplified, desperate to sound superior.
"What the Hell are You? You are nothing but a deviation," he sneered.
"A failed ascension. I was meant to become—"
Malithra turned.
She walked toward him slowly.
The world bent inward with each step.
"You?" she asked, genuinely amused.
"A god?"
She stopped inches from him.
"You harvest fear and call it order. You poison air and name it equilibrium."
Her finger pressed lightly against his forehead.
"You are a mortal administrator with delusions."
Malicer screamed as his body locked, nerves firing uncontrollably.
"You will never ascend," Malithra whispered.
"You will never be remembered."
She pushed.
Malicer collapsed into a compact mass of flesh and bone—alive, conscious, unable to scream.
Discarded.
Malithra turned away.
Outside, the city was dying.
BlightMist-9 spread through districts in crimson waves. Infrastructure failed. Panic cascaded. The sky fractured with aurora-like tears as space itself destabilized.
Malithra raised her hand.
The horizon split.
A line of absolute darkness carved outward, extending beyond sight.
A continent screamed.
From orbit, it looked like a god had dragged a blade across the world.
Oceans parted. Tectonic plates tore. Entire regions slid into the void.
Inferius watched in silence.
Some fell to their knees.
Some couldn't breathe.
Netoshka stood.
Shaking.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
This wasn't destruction.
This was judgment.
Malithra turned back to her.
"Glitching Aberration," she said, voice echoing across realities.
"You are the only variable worth observing."
She stepped backward—into the fracture she'd opened.
"This era ends now."
The tear sealed.
The city burned.
The world bled.