The universe was dying.
Not metaphorically.
Not slowly.
It was being eaten.
Malithra no longer fought the gods.
She devoured them.
What remained of her form was no longer shape, nor light, nor flesh—it was absence given will, a vast, writhing silhouette swallowing laws of reality as if they were fragile insects. Entire constellations collapsed into her body. Time fractured into overlapping echoes. Gravity inverted, then screamed, then ceased to exist.
The sky folded inward.
The oceans lifted from the planet in titanic spirals, freezing mid-air before shattering into particles of light. Continents cracked like porcelain plates, drifting apart as Erythia's core ruptured, exposed, screaming.
The Eldritch Gods fell one by one—not slain, but unwritten, their names torn from causality.
Malithra laughed.
A sound so vast it had no direction.
A sound that shook existence itself.
The submarine bay was chaos.
Metal groaned as the docks warped, alarms blaring as systems screamed warnings no engineer could interpret anymore. Inferius Squad poured into the vessel—bloodied, exhausted, some barely conscious.
Zev was still unconscious.
Rue stayed with him.
Taran leaned heavily against a bulkhead, Wire veins pulsing erratically.
Lyra stood near the hatch, sword lowered, staring at the sky that no longer obeyed shape.
Netoshka stood frozen at the ramp.
Outside, people were running.
Civilians.
Soldiers.
Children.
Too many.
Her mind fractured under the weight of it.
She could glitch them inside.
She could try.
But she knew.
She knew the math.
She knew the cost.
The submarine could not carry a city.
It could barely carry hope.
Her gaze locked onto a familiar figure.
The little girl.
The one from the slums.
She stood alone, clutching a silver pendant, eyes wide but dry—too shocked to cry. She looked at Netoshka not with fear…
…but recognition.
Like she knew.
Netoshka's hands shook violently.
"Move, Neto!" Ron shouted.
"The hull's destabilizing!"
She didn't answer.
Her thoughts screamed.
Yevgeny…
Sarka…
Krovka…
How many did I leave behind already?
The universe cracked again.
Malithra's form expanded beyond comprehension—her body now wrapped around reality itself, tendrils piercing timelines, feeding on probability, on memory, on meaning.
Erythia began to glow from within.
A terminal reaction.
The end.
Netoshka made her choice.
She vanished.
One glitch.
One tear in reality.
She reappeared beside the child, scooping her up in one fluid motion as the ground beneath them disintegrated into lightless nothing. The girl clutched her neck instinctively, burying her face into Netoshka's shoulder.
"Do not looking back, you hear me kid?" Netoshka whispered—whether to the girl, or herself, she didn't know.
She reappeared on the submarine ramp.
Lyra's eyes widened.
No one spoke.
Netoshka stepped inside.
The hatch slammed shut.
The submarine detached just as the docks ceased to exist.
Behind them—
Erythia exploded.
Not in fire.
But in silence.
The planet collapsed inward, folding into a singularity of light and shadow as Malithra consumed it whole, compressing an entire universe into herself.
Stars died.
Dimensions snapped.
Histories ended mid-sentence.
The submarine was hurled through the void, its systems screaming as spacetime twisted violently around it.
Netoshka collapsed to her knees.
The child clung to her.
And then—
A transmission cut through the chaos.
Clear.
Steady.
Lucretia.
"Inferius," she said softly.
"If you can hear this… then you survived."
Static rippled—but the message held.
"However, We cannot follow you. DomiTech is finished here. But the flame was never the buildings… or the banners… or me."
Netoshka closed her eyes.
"It was you."
A pause.
"Survive," Lucretia continued.
"Carry the fire. Find another shore. Another reality. Another Erythia—if one can exist."
"And Neto…"
Her voice softened.
"Do not look back, keep living, for my sake... for Krovka Squad... for..Yevgeny.. Goodbye."
The transmission ended.
Silence followed.
Outside the viewport—
Nothing remained.
No stars.
No void.
Only Malithra.
She hovered alone in the aftermath, her colossal form slowly contracting, folding inward as she finished devouring the last remnants of the universe. Her grin split across impossible dimensions, eyes glowing with ecstatic madness.
"Ahh, i haven't,felt so Alive after devouring so many Mortal souls in an instant," she purred.
"So many left to burn. Now, off to another in which i will decimate to consume for myself."
A portal of fractured light opened behind her.
She stepped through.
Gone.
But while she vanished, above her, something was observing.
Beyond the shattered bubble of that dead universe, something else stirred.
A watcher.
A being untouched by destruction.
He stood where no space existed, wrapped in layers of perception far older than gods. His form was indistinct—sometimes humanoid, sometimes something far worse.
He watched the fading wake of the submarine.
And smiled faintly.
"So it ends," he murmured.
"Just as it always does."
His gaze shifted—piercing not only realities, but you.
"Yes," he said, knowingly.
"I see you too."
A pause.
"Malithra's chaos… Netoshka's defiance… Inferius' survival…"
He clasped his hands behind his back.
"This was inevitable. That is, if i had my way with things.. because i am something nobody can even know or touch, what am i you may think? Well you can call me many names, The End? The First Inert? or rather..."
A name echoed through the void.
"Nezurim."
"The board resets," he whispered.
"And the anomaly moves to the next layer."
His eyes glowed.
"Let us see how long she lasts… now that she knows the universe can die."
The darkness closed in.
Not with an ending.
But with a Warning.
END OF ARC IV — RED EQUILIBRIUM
The End of Everything