The sky tore open like wet paper.

Above the sanctum, where the siphon had once traced a neat vertical thread of red-blue fire into the clouds, there was now only absence – a hole without edge or bottom, punched through the very fabric of heaven.

The rift expanded in silence. Not vacuum. Not magic. Something older. The siphon strained upward like a vein finally reconnecting to its source, now threading itself into the epicentre of the wound in the sky.

Then the light came.

Not warm. Not golden.

It was surgical.

A white so pure it erased shadows, stripping depth from every surface. It illuminated too much. Every scar. Every tear. Every bloodstained glyph on the sanctum floor stood out as if painted in neon. The fractured bones beneath them gleamed like polished marble.

Dan flinched.

Chloe covered her eyes—then didn't, as her hands fell open against her will. Her lips parted. Tears fell without permission.

Victor, half-curled near the wall, groaned, "No… no. That's not light."

Alpha, slumped beside Omega's broken body, raised her head and simply said: "This isn't protocol."

Ferron's lips moved in a dead tongue, but no sound emerged. His eyes were wide. And wet.

Even Ying paused – her weapon held halfway to reload – frozen in place, jaw tight, breath stilled.

And Max…

Max, broken and burning on the floor, forced his one good eye upward. The light washed across his face like judgment. He did not blink.

The sound began.

It came not from the sky, but from within it.

Not music. Not a voice.

A choir.

It was harmony carved from paradox – blended tones of male and female and neither, layered across an octave range that should not have existed. Low enough to shake bone. High enough to ring inside the teeth. The voices weren't words. Not yet. But they meant something. Not forgiveness. Not wrath.

Obedience.

Chloe sobbed once – sharp, hiccupped, then quiet. Dan fell to one hand, blinking away light that refused to dim. Ferron whispered, "It's a liturgy." Alyssa raised her arm as if to shield herself, then froze – gauntlet trembling.

Above them, the Choir of Chains grew louder.

The rift pulsed in time with the voices.

And at the heart of it – light began to spiral. Not downward. Inward. Like a tunnel boring into dimensions that weren't meant to open.

On the ground, Liz twitched.

Her fingers curled. Her lips parted in a silent breath.

From her temple, a flare of pale psychic energy sparked outward – thin and sharp, like the crack of a whip.

Her eyelids didn't open. But her mind did.

Ying noticed first. "She's moving." Max coughed. "Liz…" The fire on his breath almost reignited.

Another voice joined the Choir. No louder than the others. But somehow worse.

It did not harmonize. It slipped.

One note – just one – turned sideways inside the song.

The sound bent. Wavered. Something inside the rift shifted.

And for the first time since the sky split, Verrine did not speak.

She listened.

Her hands were still raised in supplication.

But her fingers had begun to shake.

…………………

The Choir kept singing.

And the sky answered.

The light from the rift no longer fell like a beam – it throbbed. Every pulse of radiance came with a pressure wave, a soundless quake in the air that made the bones in every body buzz. The sanctum's stone floor vibrated with it. Glyphs etched in the ruins began to smoulder – not from heat, but from contradiction.

The harmony deepened.

Layered voices folded on top of each other – octaves beyond hearing, textures woven from sound that felt tactile, like lace pressed against skin.

But then.

One voice missed the rhythm.

Just one.

A sliver of sound, just sharp enough to sting. A single wrong note. Not off-key. Out-of-place.

And the entire harmony fractured.

Dan dropped his consecrated spear. It hit the ground with a chime – then shattered. Alyssa reeled sideways, hands clutched to her skull. "Make it stop—!" Ferron's mantra failed mid-verse, his throat convulsing. He dropped to one knee, hand clawing at the sanctum dust. Chloe fell onto her side, curled foetal, eyes wide and streaming.

Alpha screamed. Not words. A system error. "THIS ISN'T STABLE—IT'S CORRUPTING."

The air warped. Heat and cold slammed together in jagged waves. A breeze whispered upward from the rift – smelling of blood, ozone, and something older than biology.

Max gasped as something pulled him.

Not physically. Not entirely. It was in his chest – his spine – his soul.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. A tether, thin and invisible, wrapping around something inside him. Yanking.

Pulling upward.

Like the beginning of a Rapture.

He dropped to both elbows, snarling, eyes wide. Then slammed his fist into the floor – hard enough to crack the bone beneath it.

Hellfire burst from his knuckles, anchoring him in a ring of blue flame. He roared through clenched teeth. "I'M NOT DONE YET."

The sky pulsed again. The Choir faltered. Then resumed.

But now… it wobbled.

The voices tried to realign. Tried to harmonize. But the damage was done.

A flaw had entered the system.

Above them, the rift twitched. The spiral of light now stuttered, like a heart skipping beats.

Then it moved. Not turned. Not rotated. It shifted – like a being repositioning itself just beyond the veil of vision. For a breathless moment, a shape seemed to press against the rift. Not a body. Not a face.

A presence.

Like a mountain exhaling behind stained glass.

The Choir bent around it. And the note didn't go away.

Max looked up. His eye flared with Hellfire again, but the fear was still there – underneath it.

"It's not a song anymore," he whispered.

"It's a summons."

…………………

The altar began to shake.

Not tremble – shake. Like the bones of the world no longer agreed with what was being asked of them.

Verrine stood beneath the rift, arms still raised, lips moving faster now – whispering scripture in tongues that bled vowels into one another. Words that shouldn't be spoken outside of sanctity. Words that no longer had permission to work.

Light poured down the siphon.

It wasn't fire. It wasn't judgment. It was something else. The essence of divine structure. Law given radiant form.

And Verrine tried to hold it.

Her fingers stretched toward the beam like it was a rope she could pull tighter. Her back arched. Her lips cracked from the force of her own prayer.

"Sanctify— fortify— preserve—" she breathed, but her voice was breaking.

Golden light erupted from her eyes. Then her mouth. Then her chest.

She twitched – once. Then again.

The light tore through the seams of her body like needles of glass made holy.

Her robes ignited.

But this time— They didn't sing.

They burned.

The scripture woven into the silk charred black. Symbols reversed. Holy names curled into ash mid-syllable.

A gust tore through the sanctum as the siphon stuttered. Its pulse went erratic—no longer flowing upward, but flaring outward in uncontrolled bursts.

Glyphs on the altar floor spun. Counterclockwise. Like a record being played backward at double speed.

The sanctum's walls moaned. And still – Verrine stood.

Her voice rose. Strained. She wasn't commanding anymore. She was begging.

"Bind the wound— close the gate— bless the breach—"

But her words didn't match the flow. The Choir above changed again. Notes stretched too long. Cadence breaking.

And then— the Choir sounded afraid.

The voices faltered. One after another. Like singers realizing they no longer knew the song they were in.

Above them, the rift pulsed once – violently. A ring of gold peeled away from its edge like a crown thrown off in grief.

Max tried to lift his head. Couldn't. Dan gasped beside him, clutching his chest like something inside was vibrating wrong.

And Verrine screamed.

Not in rage. Not in fury. In prayer.

The sound tore through the sanctum like a cracked bell – half-psalm, half-wail. A scream shaped like worship.

She staggered one step back. Her hands dropped.

And for the first time— She looked small.

…………………

The sound came like a gunshot.

Then another.

Then twenty.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

The containment sphere around Liz split open – not from outside, but from within.

Spiderwebs of fractured light streaked across its surface – red turned glass, glass turned crystal, crystal turned shatterpoint.

The siphon pulsed once more – vicious, erratic – and slammed downward like a divine needle stabbing through her chest.

Then everything froze.

A single, perfect fracture split the pod from crown to sternum. The siphon screamed.

And the pod exploded.

Liz dropped like dead weight – ashen skin, tangled hair, lips parted in an unfinished breath.

She hit the floor hard.

And the world reeled.

A pulse of raw psychic backlash burst outward from the point of impact – a wave of force not shaped by intention, but by soul.

It didn't glow. It rippled – like an invisible scream made real.

BOOM.

Chloe flew sideways – her back slammed into a bone pillar and slid down with a cry. Alyssa was knocked flat, gravity gauntlets flickering as she hit the floor hard enough to leave a crater.

Dan dropped his staff. His voice cracked—half panic, half prayer.

"She's going to burn up!" he shouted. "The conduit's still open!"

Max crawled. One arm. One knee. Blood trailing behind him in a line of flickering fire.

His left side didn't work. His vision blurred. But he moved. Because she was there. And she was falling.

Ferron stood frozen. Not in shock. In understanding.

His eyes locked on the glyphs carved into the sanctum floor – still glowing. Still circling. But now realigning.

The ritual was reconfiguring itself.

"This isn't right," he muttered. "This isn't how it was supposed to end."

Then, above them— one last pulse.

The siphon dove one final time – its tendril of scripture-fire plummeting like a sword from the heavens— —and pierced Liz's chest.

A flash. A flicker. And then—

Silence.

The siphon stopped.

The beam held for one heartbeat.

Then evaporated. Cleanly. Quietly. Like a candle snuffed from a universe away.

Liz didn't scream. She didn't flinch.

She exhaled.

Long. Slow. Shaking.

Alive.

Dan ran to her. He nearly tripped, stumbled, fell flat next to her unconscious body.

His hands hovered – unsure where to touch. Her skin radiated heat – not from fire, but from the residual storm of something far worse.

But her pulse was there. Faint. But steady.

His aura surged – gold light flaring with everything he had left.

"Liz," he whispered. "Liz, it's okay. I've got you."

The red sphere lay shattered. The siphon was gone. And for the first time since the plane crash—

Liz Jaeger was free.

…………………

The sanctum didn't fall. It inverted. It folded.

The bones of the world groaned, as if the laws written into them were being reconsidered.

Cracks split the glyph-etched floor in spirals – runes unravelling, structures bending at wrong angles, light leaking from nowhere. The ceiling no longer held a sky – just wrongness. Just pressure.

And from the altar—

Ferron roared.

"GET HER OUT OF HERE. NOW!"

His voice tore through the chaos like a whip.

Chloe scrambled to Liz's side, teeth grit, cuts across her brow leaking into her eyes. Her hands trembled as they wrapped around Liz's shoulders – afraid she might burn or vanish or scream again.

"Come on," she muttered. "Come on, you're okay. You're okay—"'

Alyssa was beside her in a heartbeat. She hooked Liz's other arm, threw Chloe a nod.

"Lift on three."

They dragged her upright. Liz didn't resist – didn't wake – but her breath came steady now. Her skin glowed faintly with residual energy. Like the shell hadn't gone. Just… retreated.

Across the field, Victor surged through the haze. His Chimera form was gone. He was just Victor now – shirtless, broken, bleeding.

He found Max.

Max couldn't move. Couldn't stand. One arm missing. One knee shattered. But he was still trying to crawl toward the altar.

Victor didn't ask. He just grabbed him by the chest, slung him over one shoulder like a brother-in-arms, and carried him toward the crater's edge.

Max's hand trembled.

Max's eye fluttered open. And it looked up.

Above the sanctum, the rift twisted. Not wider. Deeper. As if space was being pulled inside out and someone – something – was watching through it.

Max stared.

And something stared back.

Then— smiled.

Not a face. Not a voice. Just awareness. A presence that didn't blink. Didn't breathe.

Something that had no business being real… but was.

Max's mind cracked.

He screamed.

Not aloud. Internally. A soundless scream that punched through his spine like wire through bone.

He felt it inside his soul.

The smile.

A voice with no words.

You.

Then— a note.

Deep. Low. Endless.

It hummed through the floor, through the marrow of every being still alive. It was music but not for mortals.

It was the root. The first chord. The sound the universe had been hiding from.

Ferron staggered, one hand pressed to his ear. He fumbled for his comm.

"Hawthorne," he gasped. "NOW. I need air evac NOW."

His voice broke mid-transmission.

Outside the sanctum, something answered.

WHUP-WHUP-WHUP-WHUP.

Rotor blades.

A sharp crack of steel against concrete. Screaming engines.

The VTOL had arrived.

Lights speared through the black mist. A floodlight bathed the shattered sanctum rim in flickering blue-white glow.

Alpha emerged from the smoke, dragging Omega by his ruined frame. Her right leg was limp. Her HUD was dead. But her grip was steel.

"Hawthorne!" she barked. "Rear platform. Give us thirty more seconds!" Static. Then Hawthorne's voice – raw, urgent:

"You've got twenty. Make it count."

Victor grunted. "We'll need a damn miracle."

Ying didn't look at the VTOL yet. Her eyes were still on the twitching ruin of Wang's body. She couldn't leave. Not until she was sure.

Her fingers flicked open the nuke interface.

00:03:41

The countdown pulsed.

The wind changed. The sky bent. And the world trembled.

Escape wasn't hope anymore.

It was the only thing left.

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