The rifle bucked, not with recoil but with weight, as if Maya had just hurled a piece of her soul into the sky. The beam tore upward—a torrent of blue threaded with black, so bright it split the night into before and after.
It struck the rift.
For the first time, the Architects recoiled. The void rippled, its edges shivering like disturbed water. The pressure crushing the city eased, a fraction of a breath. Stars flickered back into existence around the wound in the sky.
Maya gasped, knees buckling, the rifle dragging her down. The override key fused to its frame now, pulsing in jagged bursts. The heat in her veins seared hotter, her vision burning with afterimages.
Below, Vector's voice cut through the din. "She hit it! She hit the damn thing!"
Rei clutched his chest, staring up wide-eyed. "No one should be able to hit it…"
The Division faltered. Soldiers broke formation, helmets turning skyward as if even they couldn't believe what they were seeing. The remaining carriers veered off course, their cannons sputtering in confused silence.
But the Architects weren't defeated.
The rift convulsed, edges jagged, like something enormous thrashing against a cage. The voice returned—no longer calm, no longer vast, but distorted, ragged:
"Unacceptable… fragment resists deletion… anomaly must be purged…"
The sky bled light. Tendrils of static lashed downward, striking buildings, erasing them into white nothingness. Whole walls vanished mid-collapse, leaving only outlines burned into the air. Streets dissolved beneath Division squads, soldiers screaming as they fell into emptiness.
Maya's chest heaved. Her skin glowed faintly where the rifle's veins crawled into her arm, etching her like circuitry.
The ship's voice wavered, glitching. "Anchor breach imminent. Key integration unstable. You cannot sustain this."
"I don't care," Maya rasped, lifting the rifle again. Her arms trembled. The weapon was heavier now, too heavy, but she forced it to rise. "I'm not letting them erase this world."
She fired again.
The shot split the darkness, slamming into the rift. Another ripple. Another fracture. For a heartbeat, Maya thought she saw something beyond it—shapes that weren't shapes, towers of light crumbling, faces that weren't human but bore the weight of forgotten centuries.
Her vision blurred. Her knees buckled. The rifle screamed, its filaments fraying, its core cracking under the strain.
"Maya, stop!" Vector's voice bellowed from below, raw with fear. "It's killing you!"
But she couldn't. If she stopped, the Architects would erase everything.
She fired again.
This time the rift screamed back. The sound was silence made solid, tearing through marrow, rattling teeth. The city shook. Division forces collapsed, clutching their heads. Even the ship above her convulsed, blue veins dimming.
The override key pulsed once—twice—then shattered in her hand. Shards of light scattered, sinking into her skin like sparks into paper. Maya screamed, dropping to one knee, but the rifle didn't fall. It clung to her, alive, feeding on her life even as it burned her hollow.
Then came the explosion.
The rift imploded, folding inward with a thunderclap of void. Stars surged back. The oppressive weight lifted. The Architects' presence—gone.
Maya collapsed to the platform, the rifle still fused to her hands, smoking. Her chest rose and fell in ragged gasps, eyes half-blind with light.
For a moment, there was silence. The impossible silence of victory.
Then the ship's voice broke it:
"Contact severed. Architects—displaced. But not destroyed. They will return."
Maya forced her head up, vision swimming. The city still smoldered, Division squads scattering in disarray. Vector and Rei stared up at her from the rubble, relief and terror carved equally into their faces.
"Maya!" Vector shouted, arms raised. "You're alive!"
But Maya couldn't answer.
Because in the rifle's cracked core, she could still hear the echo of the Architects' voice—weak, distorted, but alive:
"…child of Kade… we will unmake you yet…"
And for the first time, she realized the shot hadn't just scarred the sky.
It had marked her.