The sanctum walls weren't falling.

They were peeling.

Slabs of bone-temple architecture tore upward – not from detonation, but rejection. As if the earth itself no longer accepted what had been built there. Stone ribs unfurled into the air like broken wings, sucked toward the gaping wound in the sky.

The rift pulsed once. Just once.

Everyone felt it.

It wasn't a tremor – it was a heartbeat. Not theirs. Not Earth's.

Something else's.

"HOLD ON!" Ferron shouted, staggering through dust and bone.

A column sheared away behind him, caught in a spiralling pull of light. Debris hung in the air for too long before finally lifting, as if uncertain which direction gravity now pointed.

Chloe ran.

Liz was in her arms – half-limp, breath shallow, glowing faintly with an afterimage of power that didn't belong to her anymore. Blood soaked Chloe's sleeves, but she didn't care. She just ran.

"Alyssa—" she gasped.

"I've got her!"

Alyssa flanked her, gravity gauntlet sparking, grabbing Liz's other arm. They didn't speak again. Just moved, ducking under a collapsing jawbone arch that tore free from the ceiling. Chloe blinked—

—and all three of them phased forward, skidding across the fractured tile.

Behind them, Ferron carved runes mid-sprint, sealing a flare of glyphs that were trying to reverse their own meaning. "Don't stop! Don't speak to it! GO!"

A light split the sky.

Then the wind hit.

Not hot. Not fast. Just… wrong.

It came from above and within, bending their hair, their balance, their sense of self. Alyssa's nose bled instantly. Chloe blinked hard, teeth grit.

"WE'RE MOVING!" Alyssa shouted, trying to steady Liz's legs.

A scream cut through the debris cloud.

Victor.

He surged from the far edge of the crater, Max's limp body flung across his shoulders. The blue hellfire that once surrounded Max had faded – now just a faint golden flicker danced down his fingers like fireflies trying to hold him together.

Victor reached them, panting. "Someone take his other side!"

"No time," Ferron barked, behind them now, eyes wide at the sky. "Don't look back. Don't—"

But they did.

Everyone did.

And saw it.

The rift, now fully exposed above the ruins, spanned the sky like a second horizon. No stars. No clouds. Just the wound – bleeding light downward, spiralling inward. It didn't move like a storm or fire or magic.

It moved like a question being asked by God.

From somewhere inside it, a chord trembled – half-song, half-scream.

Victor whispered, "...I think it sees us."

Then—

WHUP-WHUP-WHUP-WHUP.

Hawthorne's VTOL screamed over the ridge, blades scattering debris as it skidded into position above the fracture. The side door yawned open, floodlights spearing the ruin in daylight.

"GO!" Hawthorne bellowed through the comms. "FIVE SECONDS OR I'M LEAVING YOUR ASS!"

The team ran.

All of them.

But no one would ever say they didn't look back.

And no one would forget what they saw.

The sky breathing.

And something beneath it… waking up.

…………………

Inside the VTOL, the roar of rotors couldn't drown out what was happening outside.

From the back hatch, Chloe clutched Liz's hand, eyes locked on the wound in the sky.

The rift was not staying still.

It was descending.

Not physically. Not like a falling object. It pressed downward, a weight without mass. A presence not meant for Earth.

Buildings across the crater began to rise – then invert.

Chengdu's skyline didn't collapse.

It bowed.

Skyscrapers folded downward, as if nodding in reverence or terror, their spires twisting and breaking in slow, graceful arcs. One tower broke like a straw and sank straight into the ground, as if the planet itself was swallowing it.

"Jesus," Hawthorne muttered from the cockpit, his fingers flying across controls. "What the hell is happening to the city?"

"Don't look," Ferron snapped. "Just fly."

"I am flying!"

The Choir outside began to distort again.

Voices in shattered octaves, some backwards, some accelerating too fast to be understood. Words from no human mouth, but mournful now. As if the Choir had seen something it was never meant to witness.

Below, the ruins of the sanctum crumpled in on themselves, swallowed by radiant gravity. Whole spires rose in defiance, then vanished – sucked inward, not downward. As if space had been re-threaded wrong.

At the centre of it all – Verrine.

She floated mid-air now, robes torn and ignited, her arms outstretched not in power but desperation. She opened her mouth to speak.

Instead – she screamed.

A burst of golden flame exploded from her chest, spiralling out of control. Her script-woven robe burned clean through, symbols flaring and vanishing. Her eyes bled molten light.

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"She's trying to absorb it," Ferron whispered. "The rift. She's drawing from it—"

"She's going to tear herself apart," Dan muttered.

Verrine screamed again.

This time, the Choir answered with a single, discordant moan.

Liz's body convulsed.

She arched in Chloe's arms – just once – then her mouth opened in a silent cry.

A psychic shockwave cracked through the VTOL. Monitors sparked. Alpha's HUD rebooted. Ferron's teeth rattled in his skull.

"LIZ!" Chloe cried, tightening her grip.

Alyssa reached to stabilize her – and flinched. "She's… she's glowing again."

Dan reached for her pulse. "It's fluctuating—fast."

On the floor, Ferron dropped to one knee, already sketching a new containment sigil with shaking fingers. "I need silence!"

Liz's pulse stuttered again – then dropped. Not fully. But it faltered. Faded.

Then she collapsed into coma once more. Her body went limp in Chloe's lap.

"No," Alyssa whispered. "No, no, no—"

"She's still breathing," Dan said tightly. "We still have her."

Behind them, the rift twisted again. Red light began to creep along the edges. The Choir of Chains screamed as a new force began forcing the rift closed from the inside.

Ferron's eyes widened. "Something's pushing it shut."

"What?" Victor said.

"Not her," Ferron breathed. "Something else. Something not ours."

Hawthorne shouted from the cockpit: "WE HAVE TO GO. NOW!"

The VTOL banked sharply.

Behind them, the last of Chengdu began to bow.

…………………

The VTOL rattled like a dying bird as it tore through the upper thermal currents.

Below, Chengdu was folding in on itself.

Inside, the team crouched low, bloodied and silent. The hum of failing instruments warred with the fractured Choir still keening through the sky behind them. No one could breathe properly. The air was too thick with heat, ozone, and the wrong kind of gravity.

Then—

BEEP.

Ying looked down at her wrist.

[00:02:18] [00:02:17]

The countdown glared up from the nuke interface like a god's stopwatch.

"We're not going to clear it in time," Hawthorne barked from the cockpit. "Not unless we find another goddamn atmosphere to fly through!"

"Can't you push her faster?" Dan shouted.

"I am pushing! If I go any harder, we'll disintegrate!"

"No." Max's voice cut through like gravel across broken glass. "We're not dying here."

Ying blinked. She turned. "You shouldn't even be awake."

Max gritted his teeth. One arm limp. One leg barely usable. Blood soaked through Ferron's wrap-job like black firewater. His body was wrecked but the fire still moved beneath his skin.

And now it was gold.

Not blue.

Not Hellfire.

Soulfire.

Max dragged himself toward the side engine bay hatch – clawed fingers smoking against the steel floor. "Open it."

"What the hell are you doing?" Victor said, crouching next to him.

Max hissed through his teeth. "I can't run. I can't walk. But I can still burn."

Alyssa moved to stop him.

He growled: "Let me do something."

Ferron swore in a dead tongue and helped pry open the side panel.

Wind slammed into them, roaring like the world trying to scream them out of existence.

Max reached one hand into the engine core, shoulder braced, fire already crawling up his arm.

"Fuel lines are failing," Hawthorne warned. "One more hit and we'll drop."

"Not if I burn hot enough."

Max's eyes flicked to Dan. "Protect Liz."

He exhaled. And pushed.

The Soulfire flared – roaring into the engine chamber like a supernova in miniature. The turbines shrieked, then screamed.

Every warning light in the VTOL flared green.

Alpha jerked upright. "Power spike detected – engine torque climbing!"

Outside, the VTOL surged forward, air splitting around it like a tidal wave of flame.

Inside, Ferron reactivated a glowing circle etched in chalk around Liz. "Soul-binding seal active. She's stable for now."

Dan hovered near Liz's unconscious body. Her skin was warm again. Her pulse returned to something steady. But her expression stayed locked in twilight.

Ying sat against the wall, sweat clinging to her temple.

[00:01:24]

[00:01:23]

They weren't safe yet.

But they were flying.

As they pierced the cloud line, the edge of the rift remained visible through the open rear hatch—glowing red now, twisting violently, as if something on Earth was pushing back against the thing inside.

Ying whispered: "Something's fighting it."

Ferron nodded. "And it's not us."

They flew on. Toward the edge of survival.

Toward the edge of annihilation.

…………………

The VTOL screamed through the upper atmosphere, engines searing with stolen soulfire. The hull trembled. Plates rattled. The windows spiderwebbed.

No one spoke.

The noise outside was thunder.

Inside – silence.

Not from fear. From knowing.

They weren't going to make it.

Not far enough. Not fast enough.

Not this time.

Ying's countdown blinked red.

[00:00:45]

Alpha sat beside Omega's motionless body. His armour was blackened, one leg severed at the thigh, visor dark. She held his hand – not out of love, but because she didn't know what else to do. Her own systems were failing. HUD offline. Muscles twitching from overload.

"I never expected… to die with company," she muttered.

Chloe sat cross-legged beside Liz, gently holding her hand. Liz's breathing was shallow, her aura flickering weakly across her shoulders like broken light.

Chloe whispered something into her palm. A promise. A memory. Maybe just her name. She didn't say it loud enough for anyone to hear.

Alyssa curled up near them – head bowed, hair matted to her forehead, body trembling. She tried to stay upright, but her hands shook too much.

"I can't do this again," she whispered. "Not another goodbye. Not her. Not now."

Dan wrapped an arm around her, pulled her in. Not with words—just warmth.

"She'll wake up," he said softly. "She has to. She's stronger than all of us."

His voice was shaking too.

Ferron knelt, still drawing fresh chalk sigils around the floor with shaking fingers and blood running from his nose. His spells had long since run dry. But he traced them anyway.

"I should've stayed in Kyoto," he said.

Victor sat on the floor, holding Max against his chest. Max didn't have the strength to argue.

"You remember April's lake house?" Victor asked, forcing a smile. "Where the barbecue caught fire and we blamed a wombat?"

Max blinked. Just once.

Victor chuckled under his breath. "Still the best weekend of my life."

Max didn't speak.

He just nodded. Once. Slow.

Ying sat furthest back—spine against the wall, eyes on her timer. [00:00:11] [00:00:10]

She didn't weep. She didn't pray.

Her lips didn't move. But in her mind, she saw him.

Wang. Smiling like a saviour. Holding her hand when she was ten.

She remembered the promise. The lie.

You were made for more.

She looked at her countdown. [00:00:05]

She looked at Max. Liz. Dan. All of them. A ragged miracle of survivors.

She closed her eyes.

[00:00:04] [00:00:03] [00:00:02]

The sky behind them bloomed white.

[00:00:01]

…………………

The screen went blank.

Ying didn't flinch.

From the back of the VTOL, her eyes never left the rift. She didn't speak, didn't blink. Just stared – at the bleeding mouth in the sky, at the cracked bones of the city, at the altar far below where General Wang's corpse still twitched like it hadn't finished its sermon.

[00:00:00]

Then it came.

Not sound.

Not fire.

A moment of nothing.

All colour vanished. Not dimmed – gone. The world snapped into grayscale. Shadows recoiled. Light inverted.

Then—

Flash.

It wasn't just white.

It was totality.

A bloom of annihilation.

The explosion swallowed everything in perfect, expanding silence – an inverted sun birthed from the corpse of a city. Light roared outward in a shockwave so fast it couldn't be seen, only felt. Not just heat. Not just pressure.

Truth.

The kind only fire can tell.

The ritual sanctum took the brunt. The fractured bone pillars and glyph-etched floor were lifted whole, turned into dust mid-air, then scattered like burnt scripture across the storm. Every archway, every altar, every screaming relic of belief – gone. The narrow alleys behind it, once clogged with abandoned motorcycles and spent cartridges, were swept clean in less than a heartbeat. The ancient temples that lined the crater's rim – structures untouched for a thousand years – imploded inward. Roof tiles lifted like confetti. Wooden beams bent toward the fireball, then snapped and vanished in a rush of ash.

Chengdu's city centre folded into itself. Skyscrapers bowed downward before their foundations gave way. Metal warped. Glass boiled. The skyline collapsed like plastic beneath a divine boot print.

The mountains to the north caught the first wave. Their faces lit red, then peeled back. Ridge-lines cracked, forested spines blackened and snapped like matchsticks. Trees vanished into steam. Stone boiled.

A column of fire and ash reaching twenty kilometres high. A vertical scar. A mushroom cloud so dense it swallowed the sun.

Chengdu didn't burn.

It imploded.

From the VTOL, it looked like the Earth had screamed.

Then the shockwave hit.

Not as wind – but as a wall.

The VTOL's rear hatch slammed closed. Internal panels buckled. Chloe screamed, Liz curled instinctively in her arms. Hawthorne howled, yanking the yoke upward as warning alarms exploded across the cockpit.

The rift twitched.

Not from fear.

But from the weight of what had just been done.

A ring of pressure surged outward from the impact crater, flattening the countryside, cracking the crust, throwing tectonic shivers into the bones of China.

And at the centre of it all – Verrine vanished.

Not obliterated.

Not confirmed.

Gone.

Whether she had survived, ascended, or been pulled into the rift – none of them knew.

The altar, the siphon, the heart of the ritual – erased in firelight.

But no body remained.

Only the scorch-mark where salvation had once stood.

And yet…

the Choir sang one last note.

Only one.

It wasn't harmony.

It wasn't rage.

It was confusion.

As if the thing behind the veil didn't understand what had just happened.

As if God had paused mid-sentence.

And in that pause – everything stopped.

No sound.

No breath.

No flame.

The world held its breath and waited to see if it had just ended.

And somewhere inside the VTOL—

Max whispered, hoarse and distant:

"…Did we win?"

Nobody answered.

Because the Choir had gone silent.

But the Rift…

remained.

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