The sky peeled.
Not clouds.
Not atmosphere.
Reality itself folded backward like wet parchment as Malithra ascended.
What stood above the ruins was no longer even remotely humanoid.
Her body ruptured outward, flesh reorganizing into something layered and obscene. Gnarly obsidian spikes tore through her back and shoulders, spiraling like broken halos. Her spine elongated, vertebrae protruding as jagged crowns. Limbs split and re-fused, joints bending at impossible angles. A second jaw unfolded beneath the first, lined with needle-thin teeth that dripped iridescent light instead of saliva.
Her eyes multiplied—then collapsed into a single vertical rift of blinding pink, burning with contempt.
An Eldritch silhouette against a dying world.
One of her Layers had awakened.
The ground for miles screamed as gravity failed, then overcorrected. Buildings liquefied into geometry. The air warped into fractal spirals. BlightMist-9 ignited across the city as Malithra's presence amplified it, transforming panic into mass hysteria.
She had stopped judging.
She was declaring her Wrathful Vengeance.
Inferius — Evacuation
Far from the epicenter, Inferius fought their way out through chaos.
The dam was collapsing behind them, water flooding cracked spillways as Synarchy Agents poured in from elevated platforms, firing into the fleeing masses. Refugees screamed. Vehicles burned. The desert horizon glowed red.
"MOVE, MOVE!" Ron shouted, dragging civilians behind reinforced barriers.
Battery Serah laid suppressive fire, her weapon overheating as she mowed down advancing agents.
"They're not retreating!" Twila yelled.
"They're trying to delay us!"
"Then break them!" Rue snarled, ripping through a squad with brutal precision.
Circe's voice crackled through static.
"City-wide collapse confirmed. Malithra's signal is destabilizing everything. We're losing Netoshka's bio-trace—no—wait—"
A pause.
"She's still alive."
That didn't sound reassuring.
Lyra turned back once—just once—toward the ruined skyline.
Her hand clenched around her blade.
"Don't you dare die," she whispered.
Netoshka crawled out of the rubble.
Every breath felt like swallowing glass.
Her armor was shattered, one arm barely responding, blood soaking into fractured concrete beneath her. Her vision glitched uncontrollably—reality stuttering, numbers bleeding into the edges of her sight.
Malithra descended again.
Larger now.
Heavier.
The air screamed under her mass.
"You witness my Divinity," Malithra said, her voice layered with a thousand overlapping tones.
"This is but one stratum of what I am."
Netoshka forced herself upright, shaking.
"The Fuck is wrong with you assholes?, Why… me huh?" she spat, blood dripping from her mouth.
"Why not just erase the world and be done with it, too chicken to do that, all that talk and no action?"
Malithra loomed closer.
Because you are wrong."
She extended a clawed limb. Space peeled open around it.
"You are an Anomaly. A contradiction that should not exist."
Netoshka's eyes narrowed.
"Hmp, yeah I've heard countless dipshits Say it. You're not the First to say that, Eldritch Bitch"
Malithra obliged.
"You, a half human mortal … and half..
"Yv'Ghrothl'Gna'Uidrr "
The word be fascinating to hear.
It reverberated through Netoshka's skull, awakening memories she didn't own—void-choirs, collapsing stars, beings that consumed causality itself.
"The "Yv'Ghrothl'Gna'Uidrr are not a species," Malithra continued.
"They are an error-state in existence. A parasitic recursion born between dimensions. They devour order simply by persisting."
Netoshka staggered.
"oh yeah? Well I didn't choose that stupid name of a soecies alien freak."
"No, you didn't." Malithra agreed coldly.
"And that is precisely why you will suffer."
She struck.
Netoshka glitched—barely—reappearing meters away as the impact erased the space she had occupied. The shockwave flung her like a broken doll, smashing her through twisted steel.
Malithra followed instantly.
Again.
Again.
Each blow carried conceptual weight—attacks that didn't just damage flesh, but erased possibility. Netoshka felt pieces of herself unravel: memories, instincts, fragments of identity tearing loose.
"You persist despite your illegitimacy," Malithra hissed.
"You inspire rebellion. Hope. Violence. You are a contagion."
Netoshka screamed—not in pain, but rage.
She glitched again—but not outward.
Inward.
The world inverted.
The Distortion Realm
Reality shattered into fractured layers of corrupted light.
The Distortion Realm swallowed Netoshka whole—a broken mirror of existence where cause and effect bled together. Time stuttered. Space looped. The Wire whispered from the margins, delighted.
Netoshka floated, suspended in raw glitch-energy, her body tearing itself apart just to remain coherent.
Malithra's silhouette appeared inside the realm.
Her presence stabilized it.
"You flee into errors," Malithra said.
"As expected."
Netoshka forced herself to stand on nothing.
"No," she growled.
"I adapt."
She reached outward—not with strength, but desperation—grabbing fragments of distorted logic, rewriting how her own existence behaved. The numbers screamed back into her vision.
11…13…4…15…17…13…21…
Her blood burned.
Her wounds began to close—not heal, but recompile.
Malithra paused.
Not alarmed.
Interested.
"Hmm…You are learning," she said.
Netoshka raised her head, eyes blazing with corrupted light.
"You want me erased?" she said hoarsely.
"Then come do it yourself."
Malithra smiled—wide, monstrous, reverent.
"Oh, I will."
She unfolded further, her form expanding, spines blooming like dead stars.
"But first," she whispered,
"Let me show you how Gods are born."
The Distortion Realm began to collapse inward.
And far beyond it, the universe itself braced.