For a moment, the thing looking at him did nothing.
It only existed.
That alone felt like too much.
The half-formed core towered over the broken plaza, shape still blurred, as if reality itself hadn't decided how to render it. Limbs? Wings? It shifted between impressions, unreadable.
But the gaze—that landed clean.
Right on Shinra.
He felt it pin him. Not his body. His presence.
A thread tugged.
Arios reacted before he could.
[Do not answer,] Arios snapped, slamming a barrier across that half-formed link.
[If it recognizes you fully this early, we lose control of the field.]
Shinra's jaw tightened.
The entity held that attention for one long, freezing breath.
Then, slowly, its head turned—if that was even what it was—and looked away from him.
The pressure eased.
Not gone.
Just… spread.
Across the whole plaza.
Ascendants released breaths they hadn't realized they'd been holding.
"Everyone still standing?" Kaizen said, voice cutting through the tension. "Excellent. Let's try to keep it that way."
Sol lifted his hand.
Light gathered around his palm, building into a tight, focused sun.
"Core's still unstable," he said. "We hit it now while it's forming, we might keep it from stabilizing."
Arisa's grip tightened on her sword.
"Or we rush in and give it exactly the density it needs to finish adjusting," she said. "But I like your optimism."
She looked at Kaizen.
"And you?" she asked. "What does Sanctum say?"
Kaizen tilted his head slightly.
"I say we don't let it get comfortable," he said. "We hit, we test, we watch. We don't commit everything to a shape we don't understand yet."
He glanced at Shinra.
"You?" he asked. "Do you recognize this flavor of nightmare?"
Shinra forced himself to keep breathing evenly.
"No," he said. "Not the way it's shaped. The root, yes. The expression, no."
"Then it's learning new tricks," Yuna said. "Great."
Ryou's scanner chimed again.
"Structure fluctuation decreasing," he said. "If you want to disrupt it while it's soft, this is the window."
"Fine," Arisa said. "We poke."
She stepped forward, aura tightening around her like a drawn bowstring.
"Apex Radiant," Sol called, raising his voice. "First wave. We focus on the field around it, not the core. Disrupt, don't overcommit."
"Acknowledged," came the answers from his squads.
"Obsidian," Arisa said into her own band, "anchor the flanks. If anything spills, you intercept. Sanctum… keep everyone alive."
"That is, in fact, our specialty," Kaizen said.
Yuna rolled her shoulders, spear forming.
"Unit 3—in front, but not too far," she said. "Shinra, behind us. Minimal interference unless it starts adapting too fast."
"You're getting very good at telling me to do nothing," he said.
"I'm getting very good at wanting you alive," she replied.
He couldn't argue with that.
The plaza moved.
Not as one, but in overlapping waves.
Apex Radiant's vanguard shot forward—Ascendants whose powers bent light, heat, and movement. Some ran on the ground, others leapt to fractured platforms and rail stubs, launching beams and compressed blasts at the air around the forming core.
Their attacks hit something.
Not the entity itself.
An invisible layer around it.
The impacts flared, shuddered, sent ripples across a spherical boundary that hadn't been visible until struck.
"A shell," Hana murmured. "It's protecting itself while it forms."
"Can we crack it?" Riku asked, sighting down his rifle at roaming entities that tried to charge the engaged front.
"We can weaken it," she said. "If we keep pressure on."
Obsidian Crown held their line.
They didn't rush.
They didn't show off.
Their heavy hitters stepped forward only when necessary, obliterating any entity that broke ranks, then stepping back, formation always tight.
Sanctum settled into the gap between.
Yuna darted forward to intercept a fast-moving creature that tried to slam into one of Apex Radiant's flankers. Her spear took it just before it hit, sending its dissolving body skidding away instead of crashing into the Ascendant.
Daren covered another angle, slamming his fist into the ground to send a shockwave up through an entity's legs, destabilizing it long enough for Riku's shot to find its mask.
Hana's barriers layered over the most exposed units, turning lethal blows into glancing ones, redirecting stray blasts away from civilians cowering behind distant structures.
Shinra did not strike first.
He watched the shell.
Every time an attack hit, it rippled.
The pattern stiffened.
Like a muscle getting used to a particular kind of pain.
[It's calibrating,] Arios said.
[Each hit teaches it how to absorb the next one better.]
Then we can't just repeat the same strike patterns, Shinra thought.
[Correct.]
He moved along the inner edge of Sanctum's line, picking angles.
When an Apex Radiant blast lanced toward the shell, he stepped just enough into its path—not to block, but to bend.
The beam hit the shell at a shallow angle instead of directly, scraping along its surface.
The shell's response pattern wobbled, adjusting to a combination it hadn't seen.
The next strike from Obsidian Crown—compact, dense, Arisa's sword flicking out—stabbed into a segment still recalibrating.
The shell cracked there.
Not fully.
Enough.
"Again!" Sol called.
They did.
The display became a complex dance—light and force and shadow converging on the shell from different angles, never in the same rhythm twice.
Yuna adjusted Unit 3's movement to fit, calling out shifts, plugging gaps where entity clusters tried to interfere.
"Three on left!" Riku shouted.
"See them," Daren grunted, slamming into one.
Hana flicked a barrier sideways, catching a blast and rerouting it into a second entity.
The shell began to show strain.
Hairline fractures of not-light traced across its surface.
Inside, the barely formed entity twitched.
Its attention was no longer purely on Shinra.
It spread that attention outward, feeling for threats.
[This is good,] Arios said.
[We're forcing it to multitask before it's ready.]
How long can we keep this up? Shinra asked.
[Not forever,] Arios said.
[But long enough… perhaps.]
Ryou's scanner chimed again, more insistently.
"Core density is dropping," he called. "Whatever you're doing is disrupting its consolidation."
Mizuki's voice crackled faintly over the link, distorted by Breach interference.
[Sanctum, Obsidian, Apex—external readings show dome pressure decreasing by nearly twenty percent. Keep pressure on the core, but watch your energy consumption. We can't afford a simultaneous burnout.]
"It's working," Riku said, a disbelieving grin tugging at his mouth.
"Don't jinx it," Hana said automatically.
The line held.
Slowly, bit by bit, hope crept in.
Not the blinding, foolish kind.
The stubborn, tired version.
The one that says: Maybe we can survive this after all.
Shinra felt it too.
Not just in the shrinking, flickering distortions around them.
In the way people moved.
At first, when they'd entered the dome, there had been the usual undercurrent beneath every step—we might die here.
Now?
Now there was a different layer.
We might win.
Sol, for all his radiance, stopped overextending, choosing his shots with care, beam strikes intercepting the most dangerous manifestations instead of every visible target.
Arisa's movements became slightly less conservative—she stepped into riskier angles to deal decisive blows, trusting that the formations around her would cover the temporary openings.
Kaizen laughed once, quietly, as he deflected a lunging entity with a playful twist of his weapon.
"This," he said, "is why I still go out in the field."
"Because you enjoy almost dying?" Riku called, breathless.
"Because," Kaizen said, "I enjoy almost not dying."
Yuna rolled her eyes, but there was a spark in them now that hadn't been there at the start.
Shinra found himself matching that energy.
Without realizing it, he loosened the tight hold on his aura just a fraction.
Enough that the entities nearest Sanctum gave him a wider berth.
Enough that some attacks curved slightly off course before they could complicate their allies' strikes.
[Your influence field is still growing,] Arios warned.
[Every Breach you touch learns you better.]
So do the people around me, Shinra thought.
He watched Obsidian Crown adjust their timing to his subtle warps. Watched Apex Radiant finally realize that if they aimed where the entity would be after his interference, not where it was now, their hits landed harder.
"Did you see that?" one of Apex's younger fighters shouted, exhilarated. "He bent its charge right into my line!"
"Don't get cocky," their squad leader barked back. "Get accurate."
Even Authority adapted.
Ryou, usually on the edges, stepped closer, directing smaller teams to plug specific vulnerabilities that opened when the shell reacted to combined guild attacks.
"Shift left six meters!" he called to a Sanctum support squad. "You're about to get caught in an echo."
They did.
The echo struck empty ground.
Yuna snorted softly.
"Authority earning their share today," she said.
"They usually do," Shinra replied.
She gave him a sidelong look.
"Not the answer I expected from you," she admitted.
"I've seen worse governments," he said.
"You've been one," Arios muttered in his mind.
He ignored that.
Ryou glanced their way briefly, catching some unspoken exchange he couldn't hear.
He didn't ask.
He just kept adjusting.
The shell finally cracked enough to show what was inside.
A shape—not fully formed, but less vague now.
Tall.
Humanoid, in the broadest sense.
Limbs too long, fingers splitting into branching, fractal claws. Its "skin" was not skin but layered scales of void and light, shifting in slow, nauseating patterns.
Where its face should have been, there was only a smooth expanse.
And in the center of that—
A single, vertical line.
Closed.
Not an eye.
A seam.
"It doesn't have a face," Riku said.
"Good," Daren grunted. "Then I don't have to look at it."
Sol's light flared brighter.
"We're cutting through," he said. "If we push a little harder, we might force it back fully before it—"
The seam twitched.
Shinra felt his spine go cold.
[Do not let it open,] Arios said sharply.
[If it opens while we're this close, the resulting field—]
The warning didn't get to finish out loud.
It finished in Shinra's bones instead.
He stepped forward.
"Pull back," he said, louder than he'd intended.
Heads turned.
"Now," he added. "Edges back. Only leaders in front."
Yuna's eyes sharpened.
"What did you see?" she asked.
"Not yet," he said.
She didn't demand more.
"Sanctum, step back two lines!" she ordered. "Maintain barrier coverage, but do not stand in direct line with that thing's center!"
Arisa's head turned like a hunting cat catching a scent.
She assessed Shinra's position.
Then, without hesitation, she echoed:
"Obsidian—back. Narrow the front. No one stares at that seam."
Sol frowned, but he wasn't stupid.
"Apex, shift!" he called. "Leave the last ten meters to us and Sanctum!"
Ryou listened too.
"Authority teams, keep your distance," he said into the channel. "We observe from the perimeter only. Do not cross the leaders' line."
Shinra faced the forming entity fully now.
He felt every eye on him.
He didn't let it distract him.
"Can you buffer if it opens?" he asked Arios.
[If it opens at full formation? No,] Arios said.
[If we keep hitting the shell, we might force it to spend more energy on self-defense and delay activation.]
Then we keep hitting it, Shinra thought.
He shifted his stance.
"Kaizen," he said, voice steady. "On my mark, strike high. Arisa, low right. Sol, left. Yuna, fill the gaps. We're going to force it to deal with multiple angles at once."
There was a slight beat.
Not of doubt.
Of acknowledgement.
"I don't recall making you tactical lead," Kaizen said lightly.
"You didn't," Shinra said. "The situation did."
Kaizen grinned, sharp and quick.
"Fair enough," he said. "You heard him, Sanctum. We play conductor now."
Arisa's eyes gleamed.
"Try not to get us killed, Shinra," she said. "I'm starting to enjoy cooperating with you."
Sol exhaled, a soft laugh threading through it.
"Don't waste this alignment," he said. "We might not get another."
Yuna moved to his flank.
"Your mark," she said simply.
He reached.
Not for eight percent.
Not yet.
He let his aura expand just enough to lace through the others—touching Yuna's steady field, Kaizen's sharp pulse, Arisa's heavy precision, Sol's blinding arc.
He didn't control them.
He synced.
"In three," he said. "Two. One."
He twisted space.
Just a little.
The shell's surface distorted, the entity inside compensating—shifting weight to one side to brace for an expected pattern.
Sol struck from the opposite side.
A beam of compressed light lanced toward the shell, bent at a strange angle by Shinra's interference.
The shell's response flared too late.
The beam carved a bright line along its edge.
Arisa's sword thrust into the next opening, her blow compact, targeted. She wasn't trying to break the shell entirely.
She was trying to chip it in a specific spot.
It worked.
Cracks spread.
Kaizen followed, his strike neither the brightest nor the heaviest—but aimed precisely where the structural stress was highest. His weapon's impact sent a concussive wave rippling through both shell and the forming mass inside.
Yuna darted in at an angle that looked wrong until Shinra's subtle warps bent an entity's lunge away from her path.
Her spear punctured an exposed node at the shell's base, where energy pooled, tearing it open just enough.
The shell faltered.
The seam of the entity's "face" fluttered.
Half-opened.
Shinra shoved.
Not with power.
With presence.
[Now,] Arios hissed.
Together, the four leaders' strikes resonated.
Energy patterns overlapped.
The shell shuddered.
Then—
—snapped.
Not completely.
But enough.
The entity's forming body spasmed.
The seam clenched shut.
A sound ripped through the plaza, not through air, but through the space behind their teeth—a raw, furious scream silenced halfway.
Everyone flinched.
Some dropped to one knee, hands at their heads.
But the worst did not happen.
The seam did not open fully.
The wave did not rip their thoughts out.
Shinra exhaled, sweat cooling too fast on his skin.
[You prevented full activation,] Arios said.
[For now.]
"Status?" Ryou called, voice strained.
"Core integrity disrupted," came Mizuki's voice. "External dome pressure dropping another ten percent. Whatever you did, do it again."
Riku wheezed a laugh.
" 'Do it again,' she says," he muttered. "Like we didn't almost puke our souls out."
"Can you repeat that pattern?" Yuna asked Shinra quietly.
"Once or twice," he said. "Maybe. It's learning faster than we are."
"Then we make it count," she said.
He nodded.
They did it again.
Not exactly the same, never exactly the same.
Sol adjusted his beam frequencies.
Arisa changed her angle.
Kaizen varied his impact timing.
Yuna watched the shell, hunting for shifts in stress.
Shinra kept the center from tearing open long enough for their blows to land where they mattered.
The entity fought back.
Not with obvious attacks.
With pressure.
With pushes at the edges, trying to force them into mistakes—tempting overreach, inviting them to overcommit.
Some guild members fell.
They didn't die, not yet—not under this level of coordinated coverage. But some were dragged out by med teams, bodies slack, minds stunned, auras flickering.
Still, the front held.
The shell thinned.
The forming body inside howled in silence.
"Dome readings?" Yuna gasped between strikes.
"Falling," Hana said. "I… I think we're actually—"
"Don't say it," Riku cut in. "Do not say the V-word."
"—making progress," she amended.
Riku nodded approvingly.
"Better," he said.
For a moment—a real, solid moment—it felt like enough.
Entities beyond the core grew sluggish, movements erratic.
Minor fractures sealed themselves, starved of energy.
The dome's shimmer began to fade at the highest points, sky peeking through in clearer shards.
Civilians watching from shelter feeds would see it—breach coverage shrinking, guild emblems still standing.
Authority's outer grid reports would log it—containment holding, inner pressure reducing.
The thought surfaced, unbidden, in more than one mind:
We might actually win this.
Hope is heavy.
Shinra had learned that a long time ago.
It settles on people's shoulders, slows their fear, lifts their heads. It's harder to make cautious decisions when your heart has already started imagining the after.
He felt it spreading through the plaza like a second wave.
Riku's jokes got louder.
Daren's grunts had a hint of grim satisfaction.
Even Hana's clipped status calls carried a steady undertone.
On the Obsidian side, some of the younger fighters held their stances a little looser now.
Apex Radiant's squads moved with spark rather than pure grit.
Even Ryou's shoulders eased a fraction.
[Danger,] Arios said.
I know, Shinra thought.
[No,] Arios insisted.
[You feel it. You don't see it yet. Look deeper.]
Shinra forced his senses past the shell, now fraying, past the semi-formed body, now damaged.
What lay behind it—
—wasn't empty.
Not a full entity.
Not yet.
Just…
Room.
Waiting.
Space, he realized.
Reserve.
The Breach wasn't pouring everything into this one shape.
It was… investing.
This was its tool.
Not its heart.
A distraction, he thought.
[An experiment,] Arios corrected softly.
[Testing how far it can push you. How much this world can endure.]
Yuna stepped back to catch her breath, wiping sweat away with the back of her hand.
"We keep this up for another few minutes," she said, "we might not have to see what it was trying to become."
Shinra looked at her.
At Unit 3.
At Sanctum.
At Obsidian Crown.
At Apex Radiant.
At Authority.
All balanced on this line.
He opened his mouth to say something.
The ground moved.
Not a shudder like before.
A lurch.
The plaza tilted, then righted. Buildings groaned. Fractured rails squealed.
Everyone staggered.
"What was that?" Riku shouted.
Ryou stared at his scanner.
His face went very, very still.
"Mizuki," he said into the link. "Confirm this reading."
There was a pause.
Static.
Then Mizuki's voice, thinner, higher, came through.
[You have to be wrong.]
"I'm not," Ryou said quietly.
Sol turned his head slightly.
"Report," he demanded.
Ryou swallowed.
"The core you're attacking," he said, "its energy output just dropped by thirty percent."
"That's good, isn't it?" one of Apex Radiant's younger fighters called, almost hopefully.
"Yes," Ryou said. "If it weren't for the part where overall anomaly output just doubled."
The plaza went very quiet.
"You're saying…" Yuna began.
Ryou looked up at the distorted sky.
"I'm saying," he said, "that whatever we've been fighting might not be the main event. And something else just… woke up."
The seam on the entity's almost-face twitched again.
Not fully opening.
Smiling.
Shinra felt the world tilt again.
This time, it had nothing to do with the ground.
[We hurt its toy,] Arios said.
[Now the hand behind it is reaching through.]
The shell around the forming body flickered, then solidified slightly—not to protect it.
To anchor it.
Power rushed in.
Not from the dome.
From behind the Breach.
From somewhere further.
Older.
The forming entity straightened, its vague frame becoming more defined.
Spikes of not-light emerged from its back.
The seam glowed, a thin line of nauseating radiance.
It looked at Shinra again.
This time, the gaze was not testing.
It was recognizing.
Shinra heard the whisper, too faint for anyone else, curling at the edge of perception.
"…there you are…"
His head throbbed.
He tasted blood.
He wiped it away before it could drip.
Yuna saw the gesture anyway.
"Shinra," she said sharply. "Talk to me."
He swallowed metal.
"We didn't hit its limit," he said. "Just its patience."
Kaizen's eyes narrowed.
"Recommendations?" he asked, voice still steady, but the humor gone.
"Stay alive," Shinra said. "Don't let that seam open. And…"
He hesitated.
Felt the weight of the choice he was about to suggest.
"And?" Arisa prompted.
"And be ready," he said, "for this to stop being a fight we can win cleanly."
Across the plaza, the dome shimmered.
Outside, civilians in shelters watched as feeds glitched briefly, then returned with a new, darker shadow filling their screens.
Inside, Ascendants adjusted grips, changed stances, swallowed against dry throats.
Hope didn't vanish.
It hardened.
Into something smaller.
Sharper.
"We're not backing off," Sol said. "Not with something like that over the center of the city."
"Didn't suggest we should," Shinra replied.
"Good," Yuna said. "Because we're not leaving you here alone either."
He almost smiled, despite everything.
[Your odds are dropping,] Arios said.
[But your resolve is not.]
That's usually how it goes, Shinra thought.
He squared his shoulders.
The entity—still not fully itself—took its first deliberate step forward.
Not yet the Catastrophe it could become.
But close enough.
"Phase two," Yuna murmured.
"Phase three," Shinra corrected.
The line held.
For now.
And somewhere, beneath the fear and the calculation and the searing ache in his head,
for a fleeting breath,
hope still felt real.