The beast's panic was a physical force. A low, guttural rumble built in its skeletal throat, a precursor to the violet light crackling to life between its scythe-like claws. With a shriek that shattered windows for a full block, it swung its arms wide.
"KWAAAHHHHH!!!"
Dark-purple lightning, thick as chains, arced from its talons, earthing themselves in the pavement. The ground itself fractured, spider-webbing out from its feet in a blast of concrete shards and tortured rebar.
"Persuasive," Sylas remarked, his voice almost lost beneath the cacophony. "But a little loud."
The anomaly hurled the crackling net of energy straight at him. Sylas didn't break stride. He simply angled his run, the chain-lightning missing him by a whisper to explode against the base of the skyscraper behind him.
There was a horrible, groaning second of silence.
Then, the building's entire lower façade vaporized in a flash of purple. The sound that followed was not a bang, but a deep, crumbling roar as thousands of tons of steel and glass lost their purchase. Sylas glanced over his shoulder as he ran, watching the skyscraper begin its terrible, graceful tilt.
"Oh, that's not good."
Realizing its attack had failed, the anomaly turned its massive bulk and fled. It was not graceful; it was pure devastation. It plowed through an intersection, its tail demolishing a parking garage, its aura stripping the facades from buildings as it passed. Sylas poured on the speed, a black streak weaving through the raining debris and overturned cars.
The shadow fell over him first—a vast, deepening darkness. He didn't need to look up. The groaning thunder of the collapsing tower was all the warning he needed. He saw the anomaly ahead, scrambling over a highway overpass.
He wouldn't make it past the impact zone.
With a final burst of acceleration, Sylas leapt towards the facade of a smaller office building. Just as the world seemed to crush down upon him, he vanished—not in a blur, but in a single, silent blink of displaced air.
The skyscraper hit.
The impact was apocalyptic. A rolling tsunami of concrete dust, shattered glass, and solid debris erupted outward, consuming the entire city block. For a long moment, there was only a roaring, grey-white chaos, swallowing sound and light.
Slowly, the cloud began to settle, revealing a landscape leveled into a jagged, smoking wasteland.
And on a lone, crooked lamppost two blocks over, perched as calmly as a bird, Sylas watched it settle. He clicked his tongue.
"Talk about overkill."
Sylas brushed the grey powder from his shoulders with a soft chuckle. "Okay. Where'd we get to…"
He scanned the devastation. A clear, smoldering path of ruin led away through the city—the anomaly's trail. At the far end, a distant, lumbering shape was still scrambling away.
"Hey!" Sylas shouted, cupping a hand around his mouth. "We're not finished! The bill hasn't even arrived!"
He took off. His sprint kicked up a contrail of dust and debris behind him, a black blur against the ruin.
The beast heard him coming. It panicked, swiping a massive claw through a line of abandoned cars and hurling them backward like haphazard missiles.
Sylas didn't slow. A sidestep, a flick of his wrist—the Axiom Fragment gleamed, and a car split cleanly in two around him. He weaved through the raining metal without breaking rhythm.
"Okay," he muttered. "Playtime's over."
He vanished in a blink.
The anomaly skidded to a halt, its skull-head whipping around. Where was he?
An instant later, the air parted beside it. Sylas was already there, his blade drawn back for a horizontal cut. The beast roared, bringing up a scythe-claw to block.
It was a mistake.
The dark sword sheared through the monstrous limb like it was mist. The anomaly shrieked, stumbling back as dark, viscous blood spurted from the stump. It writhed, its dark aura swirling to knit the wound—but the cut surface shimmered with a faint, stubborn blue light, and the flesh refused to heal.
"Told you," Sylas said, flicking his sword to the side to clear the blood. "That won't work."
A desperate, whistling noise came from his left. He leaned back casually, and the massive tail swiped through the air where his head had been. The anomaly, now truly terrified, turned to flee once more.
Sylas didn't chase. He simply watched it go, a faint, almost pitying smile on his lips. He lifted the Axiom Fragment, holding it vertically before him with one hand. His chin tilted up, his gaze looking down the blade's length at the fleeing creature.
His voice was soft, gentle, and final.
"Sever."
He brought the sword down.
There was no mighty clap of thunder. Only a subtle, slicing sound, like fabric parting in the distance.
The anomaly froze mid-stride. A line of stellar blue light appeared down its center. Then, smoothly, its two halves slid apart and fell to the earth.
But the cut didn't stop there.
A perfectly straight, impossibly deep trench carved itself through the city for a hundred miles—through buildings, through hills, into the horizon. Above, the clouds themselves were split apart along the same line, revealing a brilliant swath of clear, sunrise sky.
Sylas lowered his sword. The morning light caught his dark hair and the clean edge of his blade.
"Hmm. Job's done."
The familiar, cerulean hologram blinked into existence beside Sylas's head.
[ MISSION COMPLETE ]
[ ANOMALY NEUTRALIZED ]
"Ugh. Finally."
He swiped the notification away with a relieved sigh. As he turned his attention back to the shattered city, the world… changed.
Sound vanished. Motion ceased.
Time froze.
Sylas stood in a silent, monochrome tableau. Chunks of concrete and glittering glass dust hung motionless in the air. Cars were suspended mid-tumble. The plume of dust from the fallen skyscraper was a solid, grey mountain.
Then, the portals opened. Dozens of them, shimmering with a soft, pearlescent light, dotted the ruined landscape. From each, figures emerged—Sweepers, clad in sleek, grey uniforms. They moved through the frozen chaos with quiet efficiency, their touch causing shattered buildings to rewind, debris to fly backward into place, and craters to smooth over like healing wounds. It was a silent, systematic cleanup.
Sylas watched for a moment, then stiffened. A presence, familiar and heavy with irritation, settled over the scene like a sudden drop in pressure.
He didn't need to turn. He knew the furious aura at his back.
A tap landed on his shoulder. It was light, almost polite, but it sent an instinctive jolt down Sylas's spine—the pure, muscle-deep reflex of someone who'd been on the receiving end of a lecture, or worse, many times before.
He turned slowly, a sheepish smile already tugging at his lips.
Leaning casually against a frozen lamppost, arms crossed, was a man with neat silver hair and a grey suit that looked utterly out of place in the apocalypse. He raised a single, unimpressed eyebrow.
"Oh, hey… Vale," Sylas said, his voice a little too bright.
Vale's smile was thin and perfectly humorless. "We meet again, Sylas."
End of the Chapter-