The sky screamed.
Not thunder.
Not wind.
It was a sound—low, endless, and wrong—rolling across the city like a funeral bell rung by the universe itself. Not something heard with ears alone, but something felt in the bones, in the marrow, in the quiet places where instinct lived.
Quinn felt it before he saw anything.
Pressure slammed into his chest like a giant hand closing around his heart. His breath vanished. His knees buckled, and he dropped hard to the ground, palms scraping against broken asphalt as if gravity itself had suddenly decided he was optional.
"Qu—Quinn…" Riley gasped beside him.
Riley's prosthetic leg locked mid-step, servos whining in protest as if they were screaming along with the sky. He caught himself on one knee, metal fingers digging into the road.
"Bro…" Riley wheezed. "Why does it feel like the air is trying to kill me?"
Quinn tried to answer.
No sound came out.
The answer arrived anyway.
High above Aurelia city, the clouds split open.
They didn't drift apart.
They didn't thin or scatter.
They were ripped.
Peeled back by something forcing its way through reality like a blade through cloth. The sky stretched, tore, and bled violet light. Lightning crawled along the edges of the rupture—unnatural, jagged arcs snapping violently as the atmosphere fought to close the wound.
It failed.
Something began to descend.
The temperature dropped instantly. Breath turned to mist. Streetlights flickered wildly before melting, their glass dripping downward like wax from a dying candle. Concrete cracked in widening spiderwebs beneath Quinn's hands. Windows burst outward in silent, shimmering explosions.
Quinn's vision exploded with warnings.
[SYSTEM WARNING]
[Threat Level: EXTREME]
[Rift Classification: S+]
[Survival Probability: < 3%]
His heart slammed against his ribs.
"S… S+?" he whispered, the words barely forming. "That's—"
"Bad," Riley finished hoarsely. "That's really bad, right?"
The thing emerged from the rift.
It was enormous—far larger than the creature that had nearly killed them at Quinn's house. Its body was a cathedral of muscle and jagged plates, suspended between forms as if reality itself couldn't decide what it was supposed to be. Six massive limbs unfolded mid-air, each ending in claws that bent space around them, distorting the light like glass dipped in heat.
Veins of molten violet energy pulsed beneath its translucent hide, slow and deliberate, like the heartbeat of a god that had never learned mercy.
And its head—
Its head tilted slowly, deliberately.
Eyes opened.
They weren't eyes as Quinn understood them. They looked like fractured stars—bright, cold, infinite—each one reflecting a version of the world that should not exist.
The moment those eyes focused downward, people broke.
Soldiers dropped their weapons, hands clawing at their helmets as blood streamed from their noses. Some screamed. Others went silent, collapsing where they stood. A Nexus armored unit fired anyway—discipline holding even as terror shattered reason.
Heavy rail rounds screamed upward, tearing the air apart—
They struck the creature's hide and vanished.
Absorbed.
Not even slowed.
The beast roared.
The sound wasn't loud.
It was heavy.
Buildings folded inward like paper models crushed by an invisible fist. Cars lifted off the ground, hovering for a single impossible heartbeat before slamming back down, tossed aside like toys by a bored god. A shockwave raced through the streets, flipping armored vehicles end over end.
Quinn was thrown backward.
He slammed into a collapsed wall, pain detonating through his shoulder and spine. Something cracked. He didn't know what. He didn't care.
All he could feel was terror.
This wasn't a fight.
This wasn't even a battle.
This was an execution waiting to happen.
Nexus officers screamed retreat orders through crackling communicators.
"All units fall back—FALL BACK! It's not responding to suppression fire! Repeat, this thing isn't—"
Static swallowed the rest.
The beast descended.
When it hit the ground, the earth gave up.
The impact carved a massive crater into the street, a ring of destruction blasting outward and swallowing nearby buildings whole. Dust and debris launched into the air like a second sky forming beneath the first.
Quinn's vision blurred.
We're going to die.
The thought arrived calm and clear, almost gentle.
Then—
The world stopped.
Dust froze mid-air. Shattered glass hung suspended like a broken photograph. Even the beast stilled, its roar cut off mid-vibration.
Sound died.
Only Quinn could still move.
His breath came out in a trembling whisper. "What… what's happening?"
Footsteps crunched beside him.
Slow.
Unhurried.
A presence settled into the frozen space—heavy, but controlled. Like standing beside a contained star.
A voice spoke.
Tired. Calm. Mildly annoyed.
"…Great."
Quinn turned his head.
A man stood a few steps away, hands tucked casually into the pockets of a long, dark coat scorched at the edges. His hair floated upward as if gravity had forgotten him. Faint golden runes orbited lazily around his boots, rotating in slow, deliberate patterns.
He looked up at the immobilized beast and sighed.
"S+ Rift Beast," he muttered. "In a population center. Again."
He rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck once.
"Whoever classified this as 'manageable' owes me a drink."
Time snapped back into motion.
The suspended dust detonated outward.
The beast shrieked.
Not in rage.
In pain.
The man stepped forward.
The ground didn't crack beneath him.
It bowed.
Mana pressure flooded the street—dense, crushing, suffocating. Quinn's system flared violently, warnings stacking on top of one another.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[WARNING: UNKNOWN ENTITY]
[Threat Level: INCALCULABLE]
Riley's voice trembled from somewhere behind him. "Quinn…"
The man raised one hand.
Golden light ignited along his arm, condensing, sharpening—until it formed a blade of pure energy. It hummed softly, restrained, like something barely tolerating reality.
The beast lunged.
Reality screamed again.
The man smiled—thin, sharp, utterly confident.
"Alright," he said calmly. "My turn."
The collision split the sky.
Light exploded. Space warped. The shockwave tore through the streets with such force that Quinn was lifted off his feet and thrown backward, the world blurring into white and gold.
As darkness threatened to swallow him, one thought burned itself into his mind—
Who… who is that?