— Grey Skies, Screaming Ground
The sky cracked without lightning.The ground quaked without mercy.And Seyfe's body was launched through the air like a discarded toy, crashing spine-first into a slab of jagged stone.
His visor cracked. Blood mixed with the black rain across his brow.
"Ferez—!" he shouted, before a wave of wind knocked the air from his lungs.
Ferez was mid-sprint, sword drawn, trying to reach Emi—only to be ragdolled mid-step by a sudden gust of unnatural pressure. He slammed shoulder-first into a mound of shattered rubble.
Jerome and Emi flew opposite directions, flung like specks of ash on a typhoon's breath. Saline, barely conscious, was pinned beneath a slab that hadn't crushed her entirely only because her half-satiated flame core kept it aloft by sheer thermal pressure.
Then it came again—That terrifying wind.
But it wasn't wind.It was the tongue of the sky.
The serpent god wasn't striking to kill anymore.It was playing.
Massive lashes of its scaled, thorned tongue slammed down, lifting terrain like cloth and scattering it. Each movement distorted the world itself, the physics of the phase bending like glass over heat.
"We're not fighting this!" Seyfe wheezed. "We're surviving it!"
The terrain shifted mid-breath. One moment, a solid incline—then the very fabric of the ground inverted into a concave dip, tossing all of them like dice against a god's palm.
"I'm going to throw up," Ferez coughed, rolling over, clutching his side.
"Don't. If you do, I will," Emi said, already limping, face soaked in black rain and panic.
A pulse flared in the sky again—Not from the serpent.
But from elsewhere.
— Fold Anchor Convergence: 00:34
Aki ran.
Not like a commander. Not like a leader.
She ran like someone out of time.
Her black Veiler suit surged with jet pulses, carried by the g-force reinforcement she wore like second skin. The rain sizzled off her armor. Every breath was filtered, every heartbeat measured by the Fold Anchor clamped to her back, glowing pale cerulean blue now as it searched—desperately—for a lock-on.
"Seyfe," she muttered under her breath, "send me the damn signal…"
At last—a pulse pinged. Static crackled.Then a whisper: "—Handler… coordinates… Emi—"
It was broken. Distorted.
But it was there.
The signal burst again, spiking off her map interface. Her boots struck the warped terrain harder.
"I see them," she muttered. "I see them!"
Seyfe collapsed beside Emi, one arm guarding her as the terrain tried again to collapse.
They couldn't even scream anymore. The air itself resisted sound.
Then—A shockwave pulsed from the far west.
Everything paused.Even the serpent.The eye pulsed… once. Curious.
A beacon flare rose in the distance. Glowing blue. Piercing the gray like a blessed wound in a sick sky.
"That's her," Emi whispered hoarsely. "Aki's here."
Seyfe coughed. "Then we… run. All of us. We get there."
Jerome, still breathing but barely holding consciousness, reached out and nodded.
"Just… don't look at the eye," he whispered. "It sees everything."
Above them, the massive tongue of the serpent slithered slowly across the air, pulling back for another swipe—
But now, Aki had arrived at the edge of their zone.
And for the first time—The serpent god turned its massive, moonlit eye fully toward her.
The air felt hollow.
Not because it lacked oxygen, but because existence itself was wrong here. Like a room with walls too wide. Time itself dragged and snapped inconsistently.
Aki stood beneath the eye—that colossal moon-sized gaze dripping pale light into the sky, as if staring down at a single misplaced insect.
And still—she stepped forward.
Veiler suit locked.Fold Anchor calibrated.Signal flare up.
Her hands were bare now.
The serpent tilted its head slightly—its neck alone was miles long. The coils blended into the sky, into the mountains, into the stormclouds, until it was impossible to tell where the creature ended and the world began.
"Target analysis… inconclusive. Material composition resists standard meta-rend analysis."
Aki narrowed her eyes.
"I figured.""Let's go manual then."
The serpent exhaled.
A fog burst from its mouth. It wasn't gas. It was atmospheric corrosion—a sheer wipe of pressure and madness—boiling away layers of rock just by proximity.
Aki raised one hand.
The fog paused.
Atoms in front of her arm vibrated outward, forcibly expanding the molecules of air in a dome around her. The fog slammed against it, and for a split moment—it stopped.
Then came the tongue.
WHHHOOOM!A tongue thick as a skyscraper lashed downward at impossible speed. The force shattered the terrain into canyons mid-air.
Aki didn't dodge.
She touched the ground beneath her.
"Mass compression: localized plate."
The chunk of stone she was standing on suddenly weighed tonnes, just long enough for her to launch herself upward. The gravity she forced into the stone recoiled, launching her body like a bullet through the air—straight toward the tongue.
"Rippling disintegration: external contact layer—"
She punched.
The impact rang like a bell across the broken sky.
The serpent's tongue flinched—barely. A single scale cracked. The rest of the tongue kept moving, and Aki was thrown like a comet toward the cliffside, skidding through shattered terrain.
"Shit."
Blood laced her lips. She stood again.
"Still moving…"
The serpent laughed—not a sound, but a vibration. The kind that rippled through the marrow and turned courage to dread. Its tail, once unseen, slowly moved beneath the surface of the layer.
Aki raised both arms.
"Fine."
She pointed.
"Sector K-9. Twenty-meter radius.""Atomic destabilization… initiate."
The space around her warped.Stone melted without heat.The very bonds holding matter together came undone.
And then—A localized eruption cracked the sky.
BOOOOOOMM!
The detonation was silent at first, then thunder tore through the atmosphere as reality reasserted itself. The serpent's body reeled—not out of pain, but notice.
It had felt that.
Still, the damage was minimal.
"Figures," Aki muttered. "Your scales are denser than tungsten lattice with sovereign layering. Not even atomic unraveling cracks deeper than surface plating."
"You're not from this plane."
Seyfe and the others saw it.
The blast.The ripple.The brief recoil of the sky serpent.
"She actually made it flinch…" Saline whispered, eyes wide.
"She's fighting that thing?" Jerome muttered. "Alone?"
"No," Seyfe said, struggling to his feet. "Not for long."
The serpent's gaze returned to her. Not angry. Curious. She could feel its awareness now. Ancient. Detached. Not divine, but close enough to wear the title convincingly.
"Let me guess…" she whispered."You're not just here to kill us. You're here to watch us struggle."
The serpent hissed.
Black rain surged again. Thunder without light.
Aki activated the Fold Anchor.
"Then I'll be your interruption."
She pulled the phase stabilizer bar, and the beacon expanded.
Now it was a countdown—60 seconds until a rip point exit formed.
And the serpent knew.
Because it roared.
The rain never stopped.It poured like tarred ink, bleeding across shattered stone ridges and into deep gouged trenches.The mountains—jagged and uneven—were nothing more than fractured ribs of the world itself.
Seyfe's boots skidded across loose gravel as he caught Saline from collapsing again.
"Stay with me, Saline. You hear me?"
Her skin burned feverishly, eyes half-lidded and unfocused. The aftershock of channeling too much core left her drifting in and out of clarity.
"Hot... too hot…" she mumbled, eyes flickering, steam rising off her skin.
"Emi! Jerome!" Seyfe called out hoarsely.
"We're right behind you," Jerome answered, flames dimmed but still crackling as he dragged a limping Ferez over a collapsed ridge.
The group had one objective now: reach the Fold Anchor Beacon.
Through the cuts of howling wind and the constant slap of black rain, they could see the glint—Aki's device blooming in the distance like a silver star in a world gone blind.
But behind them…
The serpent moved again.
Its body, vast as the horizon, coiled through the sky as if the atmosphere were liquid. The moon-sized eye watched with leisurely amusement. And then—
CRACK—
The creature's tail lashed, dislodging entire mountainsides. Boulders larger than tanks crashed down into the field, creating canyons and geysers of shattered stone.
The Veilers were scattered again, like sparks from a dying fire.
Aki stood still in the storm.
Rain slicked down her black Commanded Veiler suit, the metallic lining fractured from earlier strikes. Her left arm hung loose; dislocated. Her mass-charged right gauntlet hummed faintly.
She raised her eyes toward the descending titan.
The Serpent's fangs gleamed like sun-forged spears, descending in waves.Each fang landing cracked open a chasm.One nearly struck the beacon—missing by meters.
"Almost…" she muttered.
She adjusted the dial on the beacon with her good hand.It flickered: 00:19.
Behind her, the Veilers were still coming. Bruised, bloodied, but still breathing.
A ripple of atomic heat gathered in her palm.
"Just a few more seconds…"
"Come on!" Emi screamed, forming a slippery ice ramp down the next ridge. "I've got Saline, go!"
"No!" Seyfe barked, skidding down with her. "She can't survive another core surge. Her vitals are collapsing!"
"Then make sure she lives! I'll clear the path ahead!"
Jerome was already sprinting ahead, his fists glowing with unstable energy as he detonated stone spires in their way.
But from the corner of his eye, Seyfe saw it—
The Serpent inhaling.
Not air.Existence.
The gravity wave pulled clouds, stones, rain, and flame alike.
"HOLD ONTO SOMETHING!"
They dove—under rock, into clefts, gripping edges. Saline almost flew—Emi froze the rock beneath her just in time to anchor them.
And above them, like an orchestra of fear, the serpent exhaled—
And rained its fangs again.
Each one crashing with the force of extinction.
Aki raised her head, eye twitching at the sheer pressure of space and mass this being invoked.
"This isn't an echoform," she whispered."This is something older… hungry."
She gathered what was left of her strength, one knee on the fractured plateau where the beacon sparked its final sequence.
"You want to swallow light?" she growled. "Choke on me."
She rushed forward, straight at the serpent's opened mouth.
Her fist drew light from the shattered beacon, particles dancing.
And she whispered the command:
"Ripple—"
She struck.
The atmosphere cracked.
The serpent reeled, head snapping back with the force of atomic detonation. It wasn't hurt—but it was stunned.
"Now! She bought us time!"
The field beneath them shifted—the Fold Beacon's platform rising like a shield dome of shimmering light.
Aki turned, blood streaking her face, dragging herself to the activation console.
"Get them through. I'll collapse the rift behind you."
"Wait, no!" Seyfe shouted, running to her. "You're coming too—"
"Seyfe." Her voice was tired but iron. "I'm stabilizing this. You know what's on the other side."
Seyfe clenched his fists. The others started disappearing into the light one by one.
He took one last look at the sky.
The serpent hovered.
Watching.
Waiting.
He stepped into the light.
And the world went white.