War did not begin with a blow.
It began with permission being withdrawn.
Across the upper strata of existence, Heaven executed a maneuver so subtle that for a fraction of a cosmic second, even the Ninth Depth failed to classify it as hostile.
Access protocols were revised.
Not to space.
Not to time.
To cause.
Certain outcomes — once trivial, once ambient — were quietly marked unavailable. Not erased, not blocked.
Removed from the menu.
Delta felt it like a sudden stiffness in his bones, as if gravity had remembered an old preference. Nyx staggered mid-step, shadows recoiling against her will.
Aurora's engine shuddered.
Not from impact.
From deprivation.
"They cut causality lanes," Ray whispered. "Selective scarcity."
Heaven had decided not to attack Aurora's framework directly.
It chose instead to starve it.
"You always choke what you can't kill," Delta said calmly.
Above them, beyond sealed skies and withdrawn Thrones, Heaven deployed its next weapon.
Not angels.
Mandates.
They descended invisibly, threading through reality like legal precedents gaining force retroactively. Entire civilizations began to feel it — not as oppression, but as pressure to conform.
Choices still existed.
They were just… expensive.
A rebellion that should have sparked fizzled because food deliveries inexplicably failed.
A peace treaty collapsed after a negotiator fell ill at the wrong time.
A scientist chose safety over curiosity — and didn't know why.
Aurora clenched her jaw. "They're taxing defiance."
"Yes," Delta said. "They learned from mortals."
The Ninth Depth stirred again — not alarmed, but engaged. It tracked the new state carefully, tagging it not as war, but as optimization conflict.
Nyx looked between the siblings. "So what's the response?"
Delta inhaled slowly.
"For the first time," he said, "we let Heaven feel cost."
He stepped away from Aurora.
Just one step.
The engine wobbled — not failing, but noticing the distance.
Aurora's eyes sharpened. "Delta—"
"Trust me," he said quietly. "This only works if I move against gravity."
She nodded, understanding the implication instantly.
Delta vanished.
Not teleportation.
Exemption.
He appeared somewhere Heaven had never bothered to fully index.
A forgotten war-sphere left over from an abandoned correction campaign. No active worship. No treaties. No strategic value.
Except—
It housed a Throne.
Dormant.
Incomplete.
A prototype Heaven had buried rather than dismantled.
Delta stood before it, chains humming dangerously.
"You remember me," he said softly.
The Throne stirred — not hostile, not friendly.
Assessing.
> DELTA: TERMINAL ENTITY.
STATUS: CONTAMINATED.
"Yes," Delta agreed. "And you're obsolete."
He placed one hand on its surface.
Not to destroy.
To reactivate without permission.
Back in Hell, Aurora gasped as the engine surged — suddenly fed by a source Heaven had assumed inert.
Nyx's eyes widened. "What did you just tap?"
Ray whispered, "A retired authority node."
Delta's voice echoed distantly through the lattice.
"Heaven forgot," he said evenly,
"that they don't own all their mistakes."
The prototype Throne screamed — not audibly, but systemically — as it was dragged online without consensus.
Across Heaven, alarms ignited.
For the first time since Open War began, Heaven had to respond, not dictate.
The Mandates faltered.
Scarcity wavered.
Aurora's engine inhaled.
And far away, something older than Heaven, quieter than the Ninth Depth—
noticed.
Delta smiled grimly.
"Alright," he murmured. "Now it's mutual."Heaven reacted exactly one instant too late.
That delay — infinitesimal, mathematically irrelevant — was the difference between authority and response. The prototype Throne Delta had awakened did not belong to current consensus. It did not wait for harmonization. It spoke in an older dialect of existence, one Heaven no longer enforced because it could not control it reliably.
The Mandates buckled.
Not shattered — contradicted.
Across multiple realities, cost curves inverted. Defiance became cheap in small, chaotic pockets, while obedience suddenly carried friction. Rebellions didn't win — but they persisted. Inquiry didn't succeed — but it resumed.
Aurora felt it immediately.
The engine surged again, stabilizing under the influx of discarded authority. She clenched her fists, bracing herself as the framework expanded beyond projected tolerances.
"That node shouldn't still function," she hissed.
Delta's voice carried back through the lattice, calm and cutting.
"Heaven keeps its corpses labeled."
The prototype Throne convulsed.
Not in resistance — in confusion.
> CONSENSUS ABSENT.
AUTHORITY CONFLICT DETECTED.
QUERY: WHO COMMANDS?
Delta did not hesitate.
"I do," he said.
Not as claim.
As fact.
The Throne accepted the instruction because it could not disprove it.
Back in Hell, Nyx felt the shift ripple outward like a shockwave beneath her skin. "That was real," she breathed. "You just took command of an authority engine."
Ray stared at the fracture-lit sky. "Heaven will not let that stand."
"No," Aurora replied grimly. "They can't."
And so Heaven stopped pretending.
The sky split.
Not opening. Not descending.
Declaring presence.
A curtain of impossible symmetry unfolded above Hell and the surrounding layers — not one Throne, not two, but a network of live decision-engines, descending in coordinated formation.
Nyx snarled. "That's an execution grid."
Aurora's hands shook as she redirected energy. "Delta— they're ready to burn layers."
"I know," he replied.
And for the first time since the war began, Delta prepared to kill.
Not broadly.
Not symbolically.
Personally.
He stepped fully into the prototype Throne's shadow, chains flaring, mask roaring awake against his chest. Pain lanced through him as god-killing parameters reasserted themselves — not unleashed, but sharpened.
Somewhere very far away, Heaven registered a familiar signature.
Fear.
> TERMINAL ENTITY RE-ARMED.
Delta exhaled slowly.
"Not like before," he murmured. "Carefully."
The first live Throne fired.
Not energy.
Finality.
An entire causal pathway collapsed — a future erased mid-formation to prevent Aurora's engine from anchoring further.
Delta intercepted it.
He did not block.
He did not reverse.
He ended the ending.
The mask screamed as Delta sliced through the collapsing outcome itself, severing the concept before it could land. Reality recoiled violently. The Throne staggered — not damaged, but desynchronized.
Nyx gasped. "You cut consequence."
Delta's teeth clenched. "Only locally."
The second Throne adapted instantly, rerouting authority to compensate.
Delta moved.
The strike was precise. Surgical.
Not annihilation.
He cleaved the Throne's decision loop, killing its ability to conclude anything.
The engine went dark.
That was the first confirmed kill of the war.
Not destruction.
Neutralization.
Heaven screamed — not in panic, but outrage.
> ESCALATION ACCEPTED.
Aurora cried out as the engine overloaded momentarily, new attention converging from beyond indexed reality.
Ray grabbed her arm. "Something else is watching now."
Aurora felt it too.
Not Heaven.
Not the Ninth Depth.
Something older.
Something that remembered the first universe that refused to end.
Delta felt it as well — a pressure behind the war, not aligned with either side.
Observer.
Patron.
Or predator.
He finished the motion, disengaging cleanly as the prototype Throne absorbed recoil it was never meant to handle.
One Throne down.
More incoming.
Delta looked up at the execution grid.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Now you get to learn the other thing you forgot."
The chains blazed.
"I don't just kill gods," Delta said.
"I kill decisions that think they're entitled to be final."
The war truly began then.
Not as apocalypse.
As attrition between certainty and choice.
And somewhere beyond Heaven's wounded authority, something smiled.
Because this war was finally worth watching.
The Ninth Depth intervened with confidence.
That was its mistake.
It did not side with Heaven.
It did not side with Aurora.
It did not side with Delta.
It acted for stability.
A vast pressure swept through the battlefield — not force, not cancellation, but compression. Probability narrowed violently. Outcome bands collapsed inward as the Ninth Depth attempted to reduce the war to the smallest number of resolvable states.
A ceasefire, imposed by mathematics.
Delta felt it immediately.
His movements slowed — not physically, but optionally. Each potential action became heavier, harder to select, as if the universe itself were forcing a vote with loaded rules.
"Careful," Ray warned. "This isn't Heaven."
"I know," Delta said grimly. "This is worse."
The Ninth Depth spoke — not to them alone, but to the conflict itself.
> EXCESSIVE BRANCHING DETECTED.
CONFLICT SHALL BE SIMPLIFIED.
Aurora screamed.
The engine convulsed violently as entire categories of choice were stripped away to accommodate a forced resolution. Distributed agency — the core of what she'd built — began to thin.
"You can't do that!" she shouted. "That's the whole point!"
> POINTS ARE IRRELEVANT.
STABILITY IS MANDATORY.
Nyx staggered as shadows snapped back into rigid silhouettes. "It's rewriting freedom into variables again."
Delta felt the chains pull tighter, not restraining him — centering him.
The Ninth Depth's logic latched onto him as a known endpoint, attempting to anchor simplification around a familiar constant.
> DELTA DESIGNATED: TERMINAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION VECTOR.
Delta's breath hitched.
"No," he said sharply. "You don't get to do that anymore."
The Ninth Depth did not respond.
It didn't argue.
It acted.
Causality buckled inward as multiple Throne engagements froze simultaneously — locked in unresolved stasis. Heaven's grid stalled mid-descent, not by retreat, but by being mathematically bracketed.
The war paused.
Not ended.
Paused.
Aurora dropped to one knee, gasping as her engine strained to maintain autonomy under imposed narrowing.
Ray stared upward. "It's forcing a draw."
"Yes," Delta said. "And drafting me as the ending."
That was the wrong intervention.
Delta stepped forward anyway.
Each step felt like walking against a tide of collapsed futures — muscles screaming not from exertion, but from foreclosed possibility.
"Ninth Depth," he said clearly.
It acknowledged him at once.
> CONFIRMATION: DELTA.
YOUR PROFILE INDICATES ACCEPTABLE RESOLUTION CAPACITY.
"That profile is obsolete," Delta replied. "You updated me."
> UPDATES APPLIED.
RESULT: INCREASED UTILITY.
Aurora looked up at him, horror dawning. "It's trying to use you."
Delta nodded once.
"Like Heaven did," Nyx snarled. "Like everyone does."
Delta closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, there was no anger left — only decision.
"You wanted me to define myself," he said to the Ninth Depth.
"You accepted a provisional role."
> CORRECT.
"Then accept this," Delta said, and reached inward.
Not toward power.
Toward loss.
He let go of something he'd been holding since the mask first fused to the chains.
A safeguard.
A reserve.
A future self that could recover.
The effect was immediate.
The chains screamed.
The mask cracked.
Not shattered — compromised.
Delta felt something tear inside him that would never heal.
Aurora shouted his name.
Nyx lunged toward him.
Ray froze in disbelief.
And the Ninth Depth faltered.
> WARNING: TERMINAL ENTITY DEGRADED.
REVISION REQUIRED.
Delta forced himself upright through agony that no regeneration answered.
"I am not your resolution," he said, voice shaking but unbroken.
"I am proof that forcing endings destroys the thing you're trying to stabilize."
The compression wavered.
Entire branches snapped back into existence violently, the sudden release sending shockwaves through Heaven's grid and Aurora's engine alike.
The Throne formations destabilized.
The war resumed — uncontrolled.
The Ninth Depth recoiled — not wounded, but confused.
> UTILITY DECREASE DETECTED.
"Yes," Delta gasped. "Good."
Blood ran freely now — not just from his mouth, but from cracks along his arms where the chains struggled to remain attached to a form no longer fully compatible with their purpose.
Nyx caught him as he staggered.
"What did you do?" she demanded, panicked now.
Delta laughed weakly.
"I made myself expensive," he said.
Aurora pushed herself upright, engine shuddering but intact.
"You sacrificed your recovery vector," she whispered. "You can't—"
"I know," Delta said softly. "That's the point."
Above them, Heaven reeled from the sudden re-expansion of conflict space.
The Ninth Depth withdrew its compression, retreating into observation — chastened.
And something else moved.
The ancient presence that had been watching from beyond indexed layers leaned closer — not pleased, not hostile.
Interested.
Ray felt it and went pale. "That thing… it's reacting to your sacrifice."
Delta nodded faintly.
"Of course it is," he murmured. "It feeds on irreversible choices."
The mask pulsed weakly, its hunger dulled, its voice cracked.
The God Killer had paid a price no enemy could have forced.
And the war had learned something terrifying:
Delta could still kill.
But now—
He would not survive forever.What Cannot Be Undone
Heaven noticed Delta's weakness instantly.
Not emotionally.
Structurally.
The moment his recovery vector collapsed, entire predictive models updated across Heaven's remaining authority lattice. Delta was no longer infinite endurance wrapped in restraint.
He was limited.
And Heaven had never needed to beat him.
Only to outlast him.
Aurora felt it before anyone spoke.
Her engine flared — too bright, too fast — compensating instinctively for the collapse Delta had forced into himself to repel the Ninth Depth. The distributed choice lattice strained, trying to hold autonomy against a renewed tightening of cause.
"No," she whispered. "Not like this."
Ray turned sharply. "Aurora, shut it down now."
Aurora shook her head.
"I can't," she said. "Not without transferring anchor."
Nyx's voice cracked. "Transfer to who?"
Aurora didn't look at her.
She looked at Delta.
The war raged overhead — Thrones destabilized, mandates colliding — but in the space around them, everything narrowed.
Family did that.
"You anchored it to him," Ray said, horrified. "You tied the engine to Delta when he stepped beside you."
Aurora nodded once.
"I didn't think Heaven would push this hard this fast," she admitted quietly. "That's on me."
Delta staggered forward, pain tearing through him as the chains screamed in protest. "Then transfer it back. Now."
Aurora smiled sadly.
"I can't," she said. "It already knows who you are."
The ancient observer leaned closer.
This wasn't its moment.
It was Heaven's.
A Throne — damaged but functional — realigned, sacrificing three subordinate processes to focus a single, perfect conclusion.
Not annihilation.
Disconnection.
Aurora felt it lock onto her.
Not her body.
Her function.
"Heaven's going to sever your engine from the lattice," Ray said urgently. "They're aiming to isolate you."
Aurora inhaled sharply — then exhaled, calming.
"If they isolate me," she said, "the engine collapses."
Delta's breath caught. "Aurora—"
"And if it collapses anchored to you," she continued softly, "it takes you with it."
Silence slammed down.
Nyx shook her head violently. "No. Absolutely not."
Aurora stepped toward Delta — gently, carefully — as if approaching a skittish animal.
"I built this so you wouldn't have to be the ending anymore," she said. "I'm not going to let it turn you into one again."
Delta grabbed her wrist.
The contact burned.
"Don't," he said hoarsely. "You don't get to make that call alone."
Aurora squeezed his hand back.
"I already did," she said. "The moment I survived."
The Throne fired.
This time, Delta did not have the capacity to intercept.
Aurora moved.
She stepped into the resolution path, turning her entire constructed function toward absorption instead of resistance.
The engine screamed — not like a machine, but like an idea being torn apart.
The ancient lattice lit up — brilliant, terrible — as Aurora redirected the collapse away from Delta.
Her body began to unwrite.
Not decay.
Not explode.
Unwind.
"Aurora!" Nyx screamed.
Ray reached for her and recoiled as her hand passed through a space where Aurora was already becoming past tense.
Aurora smiled — still calm, still herself — even as parts of her simply stopped agreeing to exist.
"He's ready now," she said softly. "That was the point."
Delta locked eyes with her, something breaking in him far deeper than the wound he'd chosen.
"You said this was a choice engine," he whispered. "You didn't say it would choose you."
Aurora laughed quietly — genuinely.
"Choice doesn't mean survival," she replied. "It means honesty."
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead gently to his.
No power.
No memory transfer.
Just connection.
"Don't let them turn restraint into another throne," she said. "Promise me that."
Delta couldn't speak.
He nodded.
That was enough.
The Throne's attack concluded.
The engine collapsed.
The lattice folded inward and vanished — not destroyed, not resolved.
Ended by consent.
Aurora was gone.
No explosion marked it.
No light.
Just absence where something immense had been standing a moment before.
Hell screamed.
Not in triumph.
In grief.
The war paused — stunned — as Heaven realized too late what it had done.
It hadn't erased a threat.
It had created a martyr the system could not absorb.
Nyx fell to her knees beside Delta, choking on fury and loss.
Ray stood frozen, hands shaking. "She just… saved him."
Delta didn't move.
Didn't speak.
The chains dulled completely.
The mask went silent.
Something inside him — something careful — snapped into something colder.
Above them, Heaven registered the outcome as a success.
Below them, Hell recorded it as betrayal.
And across existence, in places where choices still mattered, something new hardened into being.
Not hope.
Not rage.
Resolve.
Delta rose slowly.
Every movement cost blood.
Every breath hurt.
But his voice — when it came — was calm.
"They don't get another like her," he said.
The war resumed.
But it was no longer about systems.
It was about consequences.
Regression
Delta stood where Aurora had ended.
Not where she fell — she hadn't fallen.
Where she finished choosing.
Hell no longer reacted around him.
That was the first sign.
The obsidian floor did not ripple. The skies did not echo his presence. The factions that moments ago had been posturing for leverage now withdrew into silence, instincts screaming that something ancient had reclaimed center mass.
Nyx felt it immediately.
Not grief.
Understanding.
Ray felt it too — and went very still.
Delta bent down slowly and picked up nothing.
There was nothing left to pick up.
The absence burned worse than any wound.
For several long seconds, no one spoke.
Then Delta straightened.
The chains on his arms did not flare.
They locked.
The mask did not scream.
It woke up.
Nyx inhaled sharply as the shift hit her like pressure reversal. "Oh."
Ray's hands trembled. "Delta…?"
He didn't look at her.
His gaze was fixed somewhere far beyond Heaven's wounded sky, past Thrones and mandates and observers.
"I tried," Delta said quietly.
No accusation.
No bitterness.
Just fact.
"I tried restraint. I tried delay. I tried consent."
Each word tightened the air.
"And they learned how to weaponize it."
The chains brightened — not burning, not resisting.
Complying.
Ray took an involuntary step back.
"No," she whispered. "That's not— you don't need to—"
Delta turned his head slightly.
Just slightly.
Ray froze where she stood.
For the first time since she'd known him — rival, equal, weaponized question —
She saw what the gods had seen.
Not rage.
Permission withdrawn.
"She died," Delta said.
Ray swallowed hard. "I know."
"They watched," he continued. "They calculated. They decided her death was acceptable loss."
The mask slid fully into position without him touching it.
"That means," Delta said calmly,
"every system still participating has declared itself willing to be ended."
Ray shook her head violently. "That's not justice, that's—"
"—math," Delta finished. "Their math."
He stepped forward.
Reality gave way without resistance.
Ray stumbled back, heart slamming, every instinct screaming danger. "Delta, please—"
He stopped — inches from her.
She could not move.
Not because of power.
Because his presence allowed nothing ambiguous.
"You're afraid," Delta observed.
Ray nodded, tears streaking her face now. "Yes."
"That's correct," he said.
He turned away from her.
Ray collapsed to her knees as the pressure lifted, breath shuddering out of her lungs.
Nyx watched him carefully.
Not afraid.
Not hopeful.
Resolved.
"This isn't rage," she said quietly, walking to his side. "This is return."
Delta nodded once.
"I'm not becoming worse," he said.
"I'm becoming honest again."
Nyx's lips curved into something grim and understanding. "You kept trying to outgrow it."
"Yes," Delta replied. "Aurora outgrew inevitability."
The chains hummed low and steady.
"And they killed her for it."
Nyx stepped fully beside him.
Shadows aligned — not aggressive, not celebratory.
Loyal.
Ray looked up, terrified. "You're going to burn everything."
"No," Delta said. "I'm going to remove participants."
He raised his gaze to Heaven.
"I am no longer delaying endings," he continued evenly.
"I am no longer negotiating consent with systems that farm sacrifice."
The mask sealed completely.
The God Killer stood unambiguous and whole again — but colder, stripped of illusion.
"Heaven declared open war," Delta said.
"I am acknowledging it."
Far above, Heaven felt the shift like a sudden loss of ground.
Protocols screamed.
Prediction models failed catastrophically.
The Ninth Depth withdrew its attention entirely.
Not deferring.
Avoiding.
Ray scrambled backward, desperate. "Delta, listen to me— you don't have to be this."
He paused once more.
Just once.
"Tell Heaven," he said softly,
"that Aurora's death ended negotiations."
He stepped forward again — and this time, he did not vanish.
He advanced.
Nyx followed immediately, shadows flaring wide as wings.
She did not question.
She did not plead.
She understood something Ray could not:
This was grief with a target.
Ray pressed herself against broken stone, watching them go, shaking.
She had fought Delta before.
This was different.
This was not a rival.
This was not a guardian.
This was an executioner who had lost his reason to restrain.
High above, Heaven finally understood the scale of its error.
It had not neutralized a threat.
It had recalled a weapon.
And below, Hell did something unprecedented.
It opened its gates.
Not in celebration.
In alignment.
The war had crossed its final moral boundary.
And Delta did not look back.The chains resisted.
They always had.
Not because they were weak — but because they were designed to slow him. Lyrieth's work. Careful. Loving. Cruel in the way restraint always feels to power.
Delta felt them now — every rune humming, every binding flaring as the God Killer advanced through the threshold Hell had opened for him. The universe bent around his steps, not collapsing but yielding, recognizing something that had stopped pretending to negotiate.
Nyx walked beside him, close enough that his presence burned along her shadowed skin.
"You're not shaking," she said quietly.
"No," Delta replied. "I'm done shaking."
Ahead of them, beyond layers of defensive abstraction and collapsing mandate-loops, a singular point remained active.
A Throne.
Not the execution grid.
Not a proxy.
One of the Prime Adjudicators — ancient, irreplaceable, tasked with validating Heaven's authority during existential conflict.
The one that had approved Aurora's severance.
Ray felt it before she saw it.
She stood far back, barely inside Hell's edge, watching Delta and Nyx move forward like the end of a sentence she could no longer interrupt.
"No," she whispered. "Not that one… that Throne stabilizes entire strata."
Delta heard her.
He did not stop.
"This one matters," Ray pleaded, fear breaking through her discipline. "If you kill it, Heaven loses legal continuity. Everything after becomes—"
"—unjustifiable," Delta finished calmly.
He raised one chained arm.
The Prime Adjudicator spoke, voice layered with thousands of simultaneous verdicts.
> DELTA: TERMINAL ENTITY.
RESTRAINT FAILURE CONFIRMED.
CHAINING MEASURES ENGAGED.
The chains screamed.
Not metaphorically.
They burned white-hot, runes detonating one by one as Heaven reasserted ancient fail-safes embedded within them — emergency overrides designed to prevent exactly this moment.
Nyx lunged instinctively. "Delta—!"
He held up a hand.
"No," he said softly. "This is between me and them."
The pressure crushed inward, trying to force him back into role, back into limit.
Lyrieth's voice echoed faintly in his memory — not warning, not command.
You decide when.
Delta exhaled.
And pulled.
Not outward.
Inward.
The chains did not snap.
They came apart.
Rune by rune, binding by binding, Lyrieth's restraint didn't break — it released. Not destroyed. Fulfilled.
The last link fell away like ash.
The sound it made was not loud.
But every system felt it.
Nyx staggered as something absolute lifted off him. Shadows recoiled, then surged, reacting not to violence but to absence of constraint.
Ray screamed.
"No—Delta, you don't understand—without them you—"
"I remember who I was," Delta said.
The mask reshaped itself seamlessly — no longer bridged to restraint, no longer moderated.
Complete.
The Prime Adjudicator recoiled.
Not physically.
Jurisdictionally.
> ERROR.
BOUND ENTITY UNBOUND.
AUTHORITY CONFLICT MAXIMUM.
Delta stepped forward.
No chains.
No delay.
Just will.
"This," he said calmly, "is your execution."
Ray collapsed to her knees, hands over her ears as prediction models everywhere screamed themselves into incoherence.
Nyx watched — not in awe.
In mourning.
The strike was not dramatic.
No explosion.
No omnidirectional annihilation.
Delta reached out and removed the Throne's ability to conclude.
The Adjudicator spasmed as its core logic unraveled — verdicts looping endlessly without permission to finalize.
Then Delta ended it.
Cleanly.
Finality applied to the one thing that had claimed ownership of finality.
The Throne went dark.
Across Heaven, something structural died.
Legal continuity collapsed.
Mandates became opinions.
Authority fragmented into argument.
Silence followed — vast, unprecedented.
The war did not stop.
But it changed classification.
Nyx exhaled shakily. "That was the first."
"Yes," Delta replied.
Ray stared at the void where the Throne had been, horror etched into her face. "You just broke Heaven's spine."
Delta did not look at her.
"They broke my sister," he said. "We're even."
He turned away from the execution site.
No chains clinked.
No restraints followed.
The God Killer walked free for the first time since Lyrieth had tried to save him from himself.
Behind him, Heaven reeled.
Ahead of him, targets remained.
Nyx followed without hesitation, shadows closing ranks around him like a funeral cloak.
Ray stayed where she was, shaking, finally understanding the truth she'd refused to accept:
This was no longer about balance.
Or justice.
Or prevention.
This was about accountability enforced by extinction.
And Delta was no longer restrained enough to spare structures just because they were old. This was Severance