Time stretched, thinning into a fragile, transparent sheet.
The Phantasm's blade, a sliver of corrupted light, descended upon Ren. Below, the Conductor's violet eye pulsed with triumphant rage. In that final, frozen moment, Ren didn't feel fear. He felt a strange, detached curiosity.
Then the world shattered.
The broadcast array fell not as a single object, but as an avalanche of tearing metal and snapping cables. The catwalk Ren was on, its own supports compromised by the collapse, groaned and twisted. A meter-thick data conduit, ripped from its moorings, swung down like a colossal club.
It smashed into the ascending Phantasm a heartbeat before it could strike Ren. The creature of light dissolved into a silent burst of static. The same impact buckled the catwalk, throwing Ren from his perch. He tumbled through the air, his last conscious thought a bitter curse that he'd survived the monster only to be killed by gravity.
He crashed onto a lower service platform, the impact a distant, phantom blow.
Then the [System Lag] hit, and his consciousness became an echo chamber of the apocalypse he had just unleashed.
He experienced the cataclysm in delayed, agonizing fragments. First, the sound—a thunderous, world-ending roar as the multi-ton array collided with the central spire. Then, the light—a blinding, violet explosion as the Conductor's Covenant was violently unmade. Then, the shockwave, a physical force that rattled his bones long after his body had stopped moving.
Down below, Valeria saw the sky falling. There was no escape. Her training, her discipline, her entire being narrowed to a single, desperate act.
"Barrier!" she screamed, slamming her hands onto the floor.
Her [Ordinance Field] erupted, not as a small shield, but as a great, shimmering golden dome that enveloped her and Silas. A second later, the shockwave hit, and the dome rang like a colossal bell. Shrapnel, razor-sharp shards of the spire and the array, rained down, pinging harmlessly against the golden energy.
As the chaos subsided, the remaining Phantasm puppets, their strings now cut, convulsed in mid-air. They flickered, their forms glitching violently, before dissolving one by one into silent, harmless showers of golden dust.
The chamber fell silent.
The silence was a profound, holy thing. It was the sound of victory.
Ren, his senses slowly rebooting, saw the system messages flicker in his vision, the text a clear, steady anchor in his swimming consciousness.
[You have slain an awakened monster, Covenant Conductor.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
[Shadow Fragments: 26/1000]
An awakened monster. Ten fragments. The reward was immense. And the cost had been just as great.
He was alive. They were all alive. They had done it.
Valeria's dome faded, the last of her energy spent. She fell to one knee, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Silas peeked out from behind her, his face pale but his eyes shining with a kind of manic disbelief. They had survived.
Ren finally managed to push himself into a sitting position, his head throbbing, his world still slightly out of sync. He looked across the ruined chamber at his two companions. An alliance of a soldier, a scavenger, and a freak. And they had just brought the sky down.
They were at their absolute weakest—Ren incapacitated, Valeria drained, Silas… being Silas. But they were victorious.
It was in this moment of exhausted triumph that a new sound cut through the silence.
It was not the hiss of a glitch or the wail of a Phantasm. It was a clean, mechanical sound. A rhythmic, heavy clank… clank… clank…
From a previously unnoticed service hatch on the far wall, a new entity emerged. It was a meter-and-a-half tall, a hulking shape of black alloy and glowing red optical sensors. It was not an Aberration. It was a machine. An automated security drone—a Janitor unit.
Its optical sensor swiveled, scanning the wreckage, the dead Aberrations, and finally, the three human survivors. The city's original immune system, suppressed by the Fracture's chaos, was waking up.
A synthesized, metallic voice echoed through the chamber, devoid of all emotion.
Unauthorized life forms detected in restricted Sector 37. Covenant integrity at 3%. Activating sanitation protocol.