The first step it took carried the weight of an ending.
The plaza didn't just shake when the entity moved—it remembered all the times anything like it had ever crossed this kind of ground. The air thickened, every breath an effort.
Its form solidified as it advanced.
Not completely. Whatever was on the other side of the Breach hadn't fully committed yet. But it had given this shape enough density to stand.
Four main limbs, jointed wrong, ending in hands that split into hooked, fractal fingers. A torso layered in shifting plates of darkness, each one reflecting light that wasn't there. The seam where its face should have been was still closed, but it pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat just beneath the surface.
Its presence was more than size.
It was attention.
Focused.
Deliberate.
"Stay behind third line!" Yuna called, voice sharp. "If you're not Tier 1 or leading a squad, you don't go near that thing!"
Ascendants shifted without argument.
Some fights you could treat like challenges.
This was not one of them.
Obsidian Crown condensed their formation—no longer a wide wall, but a spearpoint anchored at the south. Apex Radiant pulled their front back a half-step, layering their brightest strikers just behind Sol. Sanctum remained the hinge between them, Unit 3 at its heart.
Authority's presence at the perimeter of the plaza dimmed, officers pulling back to safer positions. The outer ring outside the dome adjusted, but here, inside, they knew their limits.
This wasn't their fight.
Not directly.
The entity stopped a dozen meters from the broken center of the plaza.
Closer than anything that massive had any right to be.
It tilted its head.
And spoke.
"—ra."
Just one syllable.
Soft.
Wrong.
Like a word dragged over a jagged edge.
Riku flinched. "Did it just—"
"Shinra," Daren said, voice low.
"Yeah," Riku said quietly. "Thought so."
The seam on the entity's face flexed, like a mouth tasting a sound.
Then it tried again.
This time, the word slid out clearer, no longer distorted by distance.
"Shinra."
It didn't shout.
It didn't need to.
Everyone heard it.
The Breach's warping carried the voice, layering it on top of the air.
Shinra felt the name land on him like an old cloak.
He'd worn worse.
He'd worn heavier.
He kept his expression still.
[It knows that name,] Arios said.
[That much isn't surprising.]
The next word was.
The entity leaned forward the tiniest bit, seam glowing slightly.
"You," it said. "You should not exist. How are you alive, █████?"
The last part didn't translate.
To anyone else, it came through as static—a grinding, senseless noise that made ears ring and stomachs lurch, immediately forgotten by the conscious mind.
To Shinra, it cut clean.
His real name.
Complete.
Not broken at "Shi—".
Not caught between syllables.
All of it.
His vision blurred.
For an instant, the plaza vanished.
He stood in a hall of stone and light, cracked and burning. A throne split down the middle. Air full of ash. People gone.
Someone—something—waited at the far end.
"You made a promise, █████," it said. "You failed."
His heart stuttered.
Pain jabbed behind his eyes.
The image jerked, shattered.
He was back in the plaza, breath sharp in his chest.
Nose bleeding.
Again.
[Neural spike above safe limit,] Arios said, suddenly very close.
[You will not chase that memory now.]
I wasn't… Shinra started.
He would have finished with trying to, but that would have been a lie.
Yuna's voice cut through the ringing.
"Shinra!"
He blinked.
She was close—closer than he should have let her get to the front. Her eyes were hard, steady, focused on him, not the entity.
"You with us?" she demanded.
"Yes," he said.
His voice was rough, but it was there.
He wiped the blood away with the back of his glove. It smeared dark across the fabric.
The entity watched.
"Impossible," it murmured. "The seal would not have broken this soon. Unless…"
Its head tilted the other way.
"Unless," it whispered, "this era is weaker than the last."
That did something to the people around it.
Sol's jaw clenched.
Arisa's aura flared.
Kaizen's hand tightened on his weapon.
"This era," Kaizen said calmly, loud enough for the nearest guild members to hear, "is capable of sarcasm. That's an upgrade from the last one, I'm told."
"Kaizen," Mizuki hissed over the link.
"What?" he said. "Somebody has to say something."
Riku coughed out a short, half-sick laugh.
The sound grounded more than one person.
The entity's seam brightened.
"You have gathered," it said. "Guilds. Authority. Fragments of order clinging to a broken world."
Its attention swept across Apex Radiant's line.
"It will not matter," it said. "You are not built for this magnitude."
It was posturing.
Shinra knew posturing.
The problem was that it was also right—on pure numbers, pure power.
But numbers and power were not the only things that decided how a field broke.
"Talking a lot," Arisa said. "That means it's still incomplete. If it were fully formed, it wouldn't bother."
"Then we don't let it finish its monologue," Sol said.
He raised his hand.
Light rushed in, gathering faster this time, tighter.
"Radiant units!" he shouted. "Pattern Three! On my mark—now!"
Five beams lanced out from Apex's front line, converging toward the entity from different angles.
It moved.
Not slowly.
Not ponderously.
Fast.
Too fast for something that large to move in a sane world.
It twisted, its limbs bending in ways that ignored joint logic entirely. Two beams scraped its side, leaving lines of sizzling distortion; a third grazed its shoulder; the other two hit the shattered ground where it had been standing an instant before.
The entity's counterstrike wasn't flashy.
It took one step, pivoted, and swung an arm.
A wave of compressed, warped space rolled out—a blunt, invisible strike.
Barriers flared up across the plaza.
Hana's.
Apex's.
Obsidian's.
They blunted the blow.
They did not fully stop it.
The wave crashed into the front lines like a physical thing, knocking people off their feet, sending some sliding across cracked stone. A few were flung back hard enough to hit columns and not get up immediately.
Shinra felt the impact hit his own chest like a heavy fist.
He stayed standing.
Barely.
[Output: catastrophic,] Arios said.
[This is not a fully manifested form, and it is already operating beyond most Tier 1 benchmarks.]
Can we bring it down without opening the seal further? Shinra asked.
[…Not with acceptable risk,] Arios said.
[At least, not for you.]
He'd expected that answer.
He hated that he'd expected it.
"Obsidian," Arisa snapped into her band, "we are adjusting tactics. No single-hit heroics. You keep your formation. We wear it down."
"Apex, spread your fire!" Sol called. "Stop trying to pierce it in one shot—we'll burn it layer by layer if we have to!"
Yuna looked at Shinra.
"Percent," she said.
He knew what she meant.
He could fight at the level he'd been using—enough to bend space, twist trajectories, destabilize entity movements. It had been useful so far.
He also knew it wouldn't be enough against this thing if it committed to destruction.
"Eight," he said.
Her jaw tightened.
"You sure?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"That's what I was afraid of," she muttered.
She didn't try to stop him.
She just said, "We're with you."
And stepped forward.
The difference between the power he'd been using and eight percent was qualitative, not just quantitative.
It didn't just feel stronger.
It made reality itself feel… thinner.
He let the seal flex—not tear, not like before, but strain. Enough for more of his true structure to slip through, expanding his influence field, sharpening his control.
Pain lanced through his skull, down his spine, into his limbs.
He swallowed it.
The entity reacted immediately.
Its attention, previously spread across the plaza, snapped back to him like a hook embedding in flesh.
"There," it breathed. "There you are."
"Shinra," Yuna said sharply. "Stay with us."
He moved.
The next wave the entity sent—another blunt distortion blast—hit the space in front of Sanctum's line and… bent.
Not away.
Not back.
He couldn't fully redirect that much force without breaking things behind it.
He did something else.
He split it.
The wave hit an invisible seam and divided into two lesser arcs, one sliding past Sanctum to crash into empty ground, the other dissipating against Obsidian Crown's reinforced formation.
Hana gasped, feeling the strain in the air like a pressure drop.
"That wasn't just a barrier," she murmured. "He rewrote the path."
"Adds 'traffic controller for apocalypse-level attacks' to his resume," Riku managed.
The entity's head jerked, seam dimming, then flaring.
"You meddle with the rules," it said. "Again."
"I dislike dying," Shinra replied.
His voice sounded calmer than he felt.
He stepped, twisted, and a cluster of smaller entities that had been forming at the edges suddenly found themselves tripping over each other as their trajectories intersected in a way they hadn't planned.
Daren crashed through the tangle, fists crushing masks.
Yuna used the opening to dart closer, spear a flicker of light that marked precise points on the entity's limbs—not enough to maim, but enough to disrupt balance.
Sol adjusted to Shinra's warps, his beams now bending mid-flight in controlled arcs, hitting places the entity hadn't braced.
Arisa's sword carved along fractures Shinra created in the air itself, her strikes landing heavier than they had any right to.
For a few heartbeats, they almost matched it.
Guild leaders and one sealed monster, moving in a pattern that would have looked like choreography to anyone who didn't understand how close they were to being crushed every second.
Ryou's scanner pinged frantically.
"Core damage is increasing," he called. "It's feeling this. You're hurting it."
"That's the idea," Kaizen said, teeth clenched.
The entity hissed—not vocally. The Breach itself seemed to vibrate, waves of irritation pulsing through the dome.
"You should not be here," it said. "You should have fallen with your age, █████."
The name hit Shinra again.
Less like a stab now.
More like a twist.
His vision doubled for a second—plaza overlaid on ruined hall, domed sky overlaid on a split, burning firmament.
[Stay present,] Arios said, voice taut.
[If you sink into that memory now, you won't come back in time.]
"I'm here," Shinra said through his teeth.
The entity paused, as if listening.
"You cling," it said. "You cling to this era like it can save you."
It turned slightly, addressing the plaza as much as him.
"He is not your guardian," it said. "He is your leftover. A scrap of a lost attempt. When he fails again, you will fall as the last did."
"Bold talk from something that hasn't managed to kill anyone yet," Kaizen snapped.
"Yet," Riku muttered.
"Do you ever stop?" Hana hissed.
They kept moving.
Kept hitting.
Shinra kept bending.
Each adjustment sent stabs of pain through his head and chest, but he pushed anyway. The entity's limb movements grew less clean. Its plates cracked, fissures oozing lightless fluid that evaporated into Breach static.
Dome readings continued to drop.
"Thirty percent," Hana panted. "Forty…"
"We're doing it," someone from Apex gasped. "We're actually—"
The entity stopped retreating.
Up until that moment, it had been moving around them, testing, probing, adjusting to their combination of attacks.
Now it planted its limbs.
The ground under it cracked, stone splintering outward.
[It's done playing,] Arios said.
Shinra felt it too.
The pressure changed.
It drew itself up taller, plates shifting.
The seam on its face burned brighter.
Ryou's scanner screamed.
"Everyone—back!" he shouted. "It's—"
The rest of the warning drowned in the roar inside Shinra's head.
Not sound.
Intent.
The entity gathered power.
Not in its limbs.
In the seam.
"You cling to your lines," it said. "Your perimeters. Your walls. You draw circles and say, 'Here, we are safe.'"
The seam cracked.
Not fully open.
Just enough.
Enough for the light inside to leak.
Shinra's stomach turned.
[If it releases that fully,] Arios said,
[everything in this plaza dies.]
He knew.
He moved before anyone could stop him.
"Shinra!" Yuna shouted, but he was already stepping ahead of her, ahead of Unit 3, ahead of Sanctum's line.
Ahead of everyone.
Into the blast radius.
He could feel people reaching for him—Yuna trying to grab his arm, Arisa's aura tightening in his direction, Sol's light flaring as if to follow—but he twisted space around himself just enough to make touch miss.
Not by much.
Just enough.
He planted his feet directly in front of the entity.
It looked down at him.
"You cannot hold this," it said. "You could not hold the last."
"Maybe," he said.
His head throbbed.
His chest ached.
His seal burned.
"But I can hold it long enough."
The seam ripped open.
Reality screamed.
Light poured out.
It wasn't light.
It was absence wearing light's shape.
A wave of annihilating force rushed toward the plaza, toward guilds, toward Authority's observers, toward the city beyond.
Shinra reached.
Not for precision.
Not for careful warps.
For everything he could pull, without letting the seal break entirely.
Eight percent, pushed to the edge of becoming more.
Power roared through him.
Space bent.
Time, just for a heartbeat, staggered.
He threw himself, not physically, but structurally, between the wave and the world.
It hit him.
Harder than anything had hit him since the fall of his era.
His vision went white.
His bones felt like glass under a hammer.
His thoughts fractured.
For a moment, he wasn't sure if he still had a shape.
[Shin—!] Arios' voice cut out.
The plaza vanished.
There was only impact.
And holding.
Holding.
He didn't try to redirect.
He couldn't.
All he could do was soak.
Sponge for apocalypse.
The wave pushed.
He pushed back.
Not enough.
He knew that.
He'd known before it started.
He felt something tear.
Not outside.
Inside.
Deep.
Old.
The seal screamed.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the structure that had kept his true power bound for a thousand years.
He clamped down.
Not all of it.
He couldn't stop all of it.
He just refused to let it all go at once.
The wave began to slow.
Then thin.
Then—
Stopped.
Not because it had spent itself.
Because there was nothing left to push.
Shinra realized, distantly, that he had dropped to one knee.
His hand was pressed against broken stone, fingers dug so deep into the ground that fissures spread from his palm.
Blood dripped from his nose, his ears, the corner of his mouth.
The seam on the entity's face flickered.
The light within dimmed.
The shape itself trembled.
"For… a failed remnant," it rasped, its voice distorted now, "you are… persistent."
Shinra tried to answer.
Nothing came out.
He tried to stand.
His legs answered with emptiness.
He felt himself tipping.
The world tilted with him.
He didn't feel it when he hit the ground.
He just noticed, faintly, that he couldn't feel anything at all.
[…]
Arios' voice was gone.
Not distant.
Not muted.
Gone.
Like someone had unplugged a constant presence.
"That wave—" someone gasped behind him. "It—it stopped—did he—"
Yuna's scream cut through the static.
"Shinra!"
Her boots pounded on cracked stone.
She reached his side, skidding on dust, hands grabbing his shoulders.
He didn't move.
His eyes were half-open, staring at nothing.
His chest…
Paused.
Then rose once, shallow.
"Medic!" Yuna shouted, voice breaking, then forcing itself steady. "Hana, now!"
Hana was already on her knees beside them, hands hovering over his chest, fingers trembling as she focused.
"I—he's—" she whispered.
"Is he breathing?" Yuna demanded.
"Barely," Hana said. "His aura is… I don't even know how to read this—"
Daren planted himself between them and the entity, body a shield even as his own aura flickered in exhaustion.
Riku dropped to one knee a few steps back, raising his rifle with shaking hands, sighting down at the entity as if he could hold it off with bullets and stubbornness alone.
"All units!" Sol shouted. "Protect Sanctum's Tier 1!"
Arisa's sword rose.
Obsidian Crown's line tightened.
For a heartbeat, every guild in the plaza formed an unconscious second layer around Shinra's fallen body.
The entity watched.
The seam on its face twitched in what could have been amusement.
"Look at you," it said. "Clustering around a broken seal. Like insects around a dying flame."
It raised one limb again.
Not for a blast.
For a simple, crushing strike.
The kind that would flatten the center of the plaza, wipe out the leaders in one sweep, erase Shinra and everyone who had tried to stand with him.
"Move him!" Yuna screamed. "We have to—"
Her words were drowned in the building roar of gathering power.
The entity's arm began to descend.
Shinra lay still.
Too still.
His eyes did not move.
His fingers did not twitch.
There was no time to drag him away.
No time to re-form barriers strong enough to deflect what was coming.
Hope, that fragile, stubborn thing that had survived the first phase of the fight, shrank to a single, desperate point:
Someone, anyone, do something.
The entity's shadow fell over them.
The world held its breath.
Shinra's body…
Moved.
Not much.
Just a twitch.
A small, wrong jerk, like a puppet's string being pulled by a clumsy hand.
His lips parted.
And a voice that was not his own spoke:
[Master has suffered critical damage.]
The words were flat.
Mechanical.
Cold.
Everyone around him froze.
Yuna's hands tightened on his shoulders.
"Shinra?" she whispered.
His eyes didn't focus.
His mouth moved again, but the tone was wrong.
Too precise.
Too calm.
[Threat classification: Catastrophe-tier entity.]
[External annihilation output: unsustainable for current defensive parameters.]
Arisa's eyes widened.
"Is that…" she began.
Ryou's scanner spiked so hard it briefly cut out.
"Something just—" he hissed. "—what is that signature?"
Kaizen stared at Shinra's unmoving face.
"…Arios," he breathed.
The entity's arm was still coming down.
The voice from Shinra's mouth did not sound rushed.
[Primary consciousness: unresponsive.]
[Seal integrity: critically compromised.]
[Emergency override: authorized.]
The ground under Shinra's body hummed.
The air around him thickened.
A crack—small, bright—flared along the lines of the seal only Arios and Shinra could truly see.
[Initiating partial release.]
The entity's limb reached the apex of its swing.
The leaders braced—
Not in time.
For them.
Maybe in time for something else.
Yuna, still gripping Shinra, felt a heat under her hands that wasn't blood.
Something in him was waking.
Something not him.
She didn't let go.
Not even when every instinct screamed at her to get away.
The entity's strike descended.
The plaza braced for impact.
Shinra's true power had not yet fully risen.
But the seal had cracked.
And for the first time in a thousand years,
this world was about to see
what it had held back.
The line they hadn't let break had fallen.
What came next
would decide whether anything stood after.