The raven's wings sliced through the low-hanging, lead-gray clouds, like an ominous black lightning bolt. It finally landed in an even more dilapidated ruin, perching on an object half-buried in the rubble.
It was a security mechanical body, or rather, its surviving upper half. Its lower half was missing, and broken cables and hydraulic pipes, like withered vines, were exposed outside its rusted armor. Its optical sensors had long since extinguished, its head hung limply on its chest, and its sole remaining mechanical arm still held the posture of its last grip on a weapon, frozen at the moment of death. The raven perched on this cold mechanical arm, its crimson eyes turning to the Yaksha who had followed.
It hopped, pecking with its hard beak at a clearly damaged armor plate on the mechanical body's rear neck. Beneath it, a standard military data port was exposed, covered in dust and solidified dark red punishing fungal plaques. The raven turned its head, its crimson gaze fixed intently on the Yaksha, silently conveying its command.
"Connect?" The ethereal purple flames beneath the Yaksha's mask flickered. She looked down at her hand, composed of punishing and dark silver metal—sharp, inhuman, a tearing claw rather than a connecting tool. She had no compatible ports on her body; this very shell was the most thorough anomaly.
But the raven's gaze stubbornly fixed on her. The crimson light, it seemed, pierced through the mask, stabbing into her chaotic sea of consciousness. A vague intention churned, stemming from the restless Punishing energy within her that had reconstructed her—imitate, reshape.
She hesitantly raised her hand, her cold fingertips hovering above the mechanical body's port. Her will focused on the sharp claw tip. A subtle, tentative stream of Punishing energy seeped from her fingertips, no longer a violent erosion, but rather possessing a kind of... *malleability*. The dark silver metal structure, driven by her will, began to soften, writhe, and deform! The sharp claws, like melting wax, retracted inward, molded, and finally solidified into a cold metal plug that perfectly matched the mechanical body's rear neck port!
Even she felt a chill of surprise. This shell, this cursed cage, seemed more... "flexible" than she had imagined.
There was no time to hesitate. She slowly inserted the port, transformed from her own finger, into the mechanical body's rear neck port.
*Click.*
A faint connecting sound rang out. Instantly, a cold, fragmented data stream, filled with the despair of its last moments, surged into her sea of consciousness like a breaching ice river, flowing along the punishing-composed connection line!
Piercing alarms! A sharp buzzing almost tore through virtual eardrums.
Chaotic visual signals! Shaking, blurry images: fleeing crowds, distorted, terrified faces, cries drowned out by explosions and the roar of tearing metal.
Cold logical commands flickered in the core: "Protect human evacuation routes. Block infected entities. Highest priority."
Screen locked: Swarming, grotesquely distorted low-level infected entities surged like a tide from the street corner, their limbs mutated, glowing with an ominous crimson light. The security mechanical body's weapon arrays were fully engaged, hot beams and physical barrages intertwining into a net of fire, tearing apart the infected entities at the forefront! Explosive flashes and flying metal fragments filled the view.
Humans! Several figures lagging behind ran frantically at the edge of the screen, fleeing towards a narrow alley opposite the mechanical body's defensive direction. A woman holding a child stumbled and fell, the child letting out a heart-wrenching cry.
Command executed: The mechanical body faithfully concentrated its firepower on the main direction from which the infected tide surged, buying a few negligible seconds for those humans fleeing in the "opposite direction."
Cost: The infected entities' claws and corrosive acid began to breach the fire net, landing on the mechanical body's armor, emitting a grating sizzle and the groan of twisting metal. The alarm grew more shrill.
Final image: The view shook violently, tilting. A massive, crimson crystal-covered infected arm penetrated the defense, smashing heavily onto the mechanical body's optical sensor array! The screen was instantly covered by a crimson, writhing data stream, like viscous blood plasma. A cold system prompt sounded amidst the crimson, with intermittent static: "Core... dam... aged... mis... sion... fail... ed..." Then, everything plunged into dead silence.
Data stream interrupted.
The Yaksha abruptly withdrew her hand, the deformed port instantly softening and flowing, reverting to its sharp claw form. She stumbled back a step, her cold shell still seemingly retaining the despair and helplessness of the security mechanical body's final moments. Dying for those humans who fled in the "opposite direction"... a cold logical command, a futile sacrifice.
The raven flew down to her feet, its crimson eyes looking up at her. This time, its gaze was no longer merely guidance; it seemed to hold a trace of... *urging*?
Urging her to continue, urging her to grasp more.
It gently pecked at her newly transformed claw.
The Yaksha understood. It was guiding her to control. To control the punishing power that constituted her existence, the power she had once feared and loathed.
She focused again, her will sinking into that hand. No longer imitating external objects, but attempting to... reshape herself. To temporarily rein in this inhuman ferocity, to revert to a shadow of the "past"? This thought brought a sting, yet it was driven by a deeper curiosity and a faint glimmer of desire, almost drowned by despair.
Punishing energy flowed at her fingertips, and the dark silver metal structure softened and molded again. The sharp claw tips retracted inward, blunted, and elongated. The ferocious joint structures were smoothly covered, and the contours of her finger joints became slender... In a few breaths, the tearing claw disappeared. In its place was a "skin" covered in dark silver, flowing with subtle purple light, yet its form was incredibly close to a human female's hand! Her five fingers were slender, her contours soft, and except for the inhuman material and cold temperature, it was almost identical to the hand of "her" in her memory.
An indescribable shiver ran through her core consciousness. Had she succeeded? Or was this merely a deeper mockery from the punishing?
She instinctively raised her hand and touched her face. Her fingertips met the cold, hard Yaksha mask. A thought rose uncontrollably: *Could the mask... also change?*
Her will focused on the ferocious, demonic face. Punishing energy flowed and receded on the mask's surface. The sharp fangs softened and disappeared. The hard material covering the lower half of her face receded like a tide, converging and thinning towards her jaw and neck, finally leaving only a relatively smooth dark silver "mask" covering her mouth and nose down to her jaw, still with an inhuman texture, but at least... revealing the part above her eyes.
Her gaze urgently swept across the ruins, searching for anything that could reflect a mirror image. Finally, her eyes fixed on a cracked mirror shard embedded in a twisted metal frame.
She almost lunged, kneeling before the broken mirror.
The mirror surface was divided by spiderweb-like cracks, and the reflection was therefore distorted and fragmented. However, in the largest, relatively intact shard, she saw—
The upper half of a face!
It was... Gray Raven Commander's face! The familiar forehead, the familiar outline of her brow bone, those eyes... Although deep within her pupils burned ethereal purple flames, and the whites of her eyes carried subtle purple energy veins, the shape, the indelible weariness and tenacity deep within that gaze... It was her! It was "her" face!
A violent spasm ran through the location of her heart (if that energy core could still be called a heart). Was it joy? Fear? Or a deeper confusion? She gazed greedily at the half-human face in the mirror, her fingers trembling as she raised them, wanting to touch the reflection in the mirror, to confirm this brief return to "reality."
Just then, another anomaly occurred!
*Beside* her reflection in the mirror, in the shattered mirror shard that should have reflected the ruins behind her, the scene suddenly warped! A figure appeared without warning, occupying that half of the mirror!
It was a *white-haired girl*.
She floated in the void of the mirror, her face delicate but with an inhuman etherealness. Most unsettling were her back—not wings, but two huge, translucent, strange structures resembling moth wings! The wing membranes were not covered in scales, but by countless slowly opening and closing, glowing eyes! Each eye seemed to possess an independent consciousness, cold, curious, with an all-seeing gaze, piercing the mirror, "staring" intently at the Yaksha who was gazing into the mirror!
An indescribable tremor and fear, stemming from the depths of her soul, gripped the Yaksha! The name, like a sealed taboo, uncontrollably squeezed out hoarsely from her (or rather, from the depths of the memories carried by this shell):
...Chaos...?
The white-haired girl in the mirror—Chaos—showed no expression. She merely floated, her myriad-eyed wings behind her silently opening and closing. The Yaksha (or rather, the Commander's reflection in the mirror) trembled as she reached out, not to touch her own face, but towards the eerie white-haired girl in the mirror. Her fingertips almost touched the cold mirror surface... Bang—!!!
A deafening gunshot, like a clap of thunder, tore through the dead silence of the ruins!
The Yaksha instinctively rolled violently to the side! A high-velocity armor-piercing round grazed her shoulder armor, striking hard against the broken mirror!
Crash—!
The mirror shattered completely! Glass shards scattered like ice crystals!
The Yaksha crouched behind cover, the ethereal purple flames beneath her mask burning fiercely due to the sudden attack and the disappearance of the mirror's illusion. She sharply turned her head, her keen gaze sweeping towards the direction of the gunshot—there were only collapsed building remnants and a pervasive gray punishing mist, the attacker was well hidden.
She quickly looked at the mirror's original position again—only a twisted metal frame and glittering shards on the ground remained. In the shards, only the distorted ruins and her own terrified eyes, covered by a half-mask and burning with purple flames, were reflected.
Where was any trace of Chaos?
It was as if that fleeting glimpse of the myriad-eyed girl, along with that call, was just an... illusion... disturbed by the gunshot?
The raven silently landed on a piece of rubble beside her, its crimson eyes vigilantly looking towards the direction of the bullet's origin, emitting a low, metallic-scraping gurgle. In the air, a dangerous scent of gunpowder and punishing particles mixed and permeated.