The argument about soup stopped halfway through.
One moment, Unit 3 was in the cafeteria—Riku swearing the broth had personally wronged him, Daren eating like nothing in the world could ever upset him, Hana quietly rearranging the condiments into a neat line, Yuna listening with the long-suffering patience of a squad captain.
The next, every band in the room vibrated at once.
A sharp, triple-pulse alert cut through the cafeteria noise.
Conversations broke off. Chairs scraped back. Trays hit tables.
Shinra's band lit up.
[EMERGENCY CALL — ALL AVAILABLE SQUADS]
[Location: Central Transit Hub Sector 4]
[Classification: Large-Scale Breach Event — Level: HIGH]
[Authority Response: En route. ETA: unknown.]
The cafeteria air tightened.
"Transit Hub," Yuna said immediately, already standing. "That's too close to the commercial belts."
Riku shot up, soup forgotten. "If that goes bad, half the sector's getting hit."
Hana checked her band, eyes flicking rapidly. "Initial reports say multiple anomalies merging," she said. "Breach overlap."
"Overlapping Breaches." Daren's jaw clenched. "Great."
[Master,] Arios said.
[Energy spikes from that area match patterns preceding large-scale spatial failure.]
How large? Shinra thought.
[Too soon to tell.]
Yuna was already moving.
"Unit 3, move," she snapped. "Gear up on the way if you have to. We're heading to the Hub."
Riku grabbed his rifles. "No briefing?" he asked.
"We'll get it on route," Yuna said. "If we wait for the perfect explanation, people will be dead by the time we arrive."
Hana slid to her feet, disks snapping into their bracer slots with practiced ease. "Agreed."
Daren simply stood, chair pushed back, ready.
Shinra rose too, the room's scattered tension sliding around him like water.
[Master, this anomaly is… different,] Arios said quietly.
[The distortion signature is sharper than the one at Tunnel 9-A. It feels closer to…]
"Closer to what?" Shinra asked inwardly, following Yuna toward the doors.
[…to the ones that appeared near the end of your era.]
His hand curled slightly at his side.
Then I need to see it, he thought.
The city around the Central Transit Hub was not calm.
Even before Unit 3 reached the perimeter, Shinra could feel the panic.
People pushed through the streets, some running away from the heart of the sector, others clustered by hastily erected barriers, held back by guards shouting for them to move further away. Vehicles had been halted or rerouted mid-route, their hovering frames parked awkwardly along the sides.
Above it all, the Hub towered—multiple rails and lines converging into a massive complex of platforms, tunnels, and suspended pathways.
And from its center, the Breach.
No—Breaches.
The air above the main concourse twisted, not in a single tear, but in several overlapping fractures of space. Cracks of pale, electric light jagged across each other like broken glass.
Entities already swarmed.
They spilled out onto walkways, climbing walls, dropping onto abandoned tracks. Some were the familiar mask-faced shades. Others were larger, with more defined bodies, limbs like sharpened bone, eyes burning with unstable brightness.
Shinra's eyes narrowed.
[Reading multiple anchor points,] Arios said.
[Three distinct anomaly cores attempting to occupy the same spatial frame.]
"Can this sector hold that?" Shinra asked.
[Not for long.]
Sanctum squads were already on site.
Shinra saw the guild emblem on several groups pushing into the lower levels, establishing makeshift lines, pulling civilians back. There were other guild emblems too—Silverline's sharp, metallic symbol; a smaller guild he didn't recognize; and further in, on a raised platform, the thorned crown of Obsidian Crown.
Yuna didn't slow.
"We break at the outer line and move in," she said. "Unit 3, standard combat formation. Don't get separated. Do not chase lone entities out of formation; there are enough squads to handle spread. We're going for the dense core regions."
"Copy," Riku said.
"Understood," Hana said.
"Got it," Daren grunted.
They passed through the first barrier with Sanctum's clearance.
The roar hit them properly then—screams, the shriek of entities, the crashing of abilities against Breach material, the thunder of collapsing structures.
Shinra felt the pull of the anomalies like pressure against his skin.
Closer, he thought.
He wanted to see.
He also wanted to keep the living things between him and that pull from being torn apart.
Yuna's spear formed in her hand almost reflexively, light condensing with a sharper edge than in training. She glanced at him once.
"Same as last time," she shouted over the din. "Watch first if you have to. But if things start tipping, don't wait."
"I won't," Shinra said.
They pushed into the Hub.
***
Combat inside the Hub wasn't clean.
The main concourse had been cleared of civilians, but signs of their sudden flight remained—dropped bags, abandoned carts, scattered screens still playing muted advertisements.
Entities moved between these remnants like shadows between graves.
Unit 3 moved fast.
Yuna carved a path forward, spear thrusting and sweeping. Daren cleaned up anything large that tried to charge the line. Riku took high points where he could, jump-boosting onto rails and platforms, his shots picking off entities that slipped through cracks. Hana's barriers curved around all of them, invisible until something slammed into them and recoiled.
Shinra followed.
He cut only what slipped past them—small, clean motions that erased entities without drawing attention. A flick of his hand through a mask here, a redirected claw there. To anyone watching casually, he might have looked like a slightly overqualified rear guard.
To anyone paying real attention…
[Minimal output maintained,] Arios noted.
[No abnormal readings detected from your immediate vicinity—yet.]
"Good," Shinra said under his breath.
A scream cut across the concourse.
To the left, near a shattered information kiosk, a small cluster of people had been missed in the evacuation—two Mundanes and a low-tier Ascendant, cornered by three entities closing in.
Yuna saw them at the same time he did.
"Daren!" she shouted, already moving.
"I see them!" he yelled back, veering toward their position.
Shinra shifted.
A single entity lunged for the nearest Mundane, claws outstretched.
He moved.
This time, he didn't stay restrained.
He reached the entity in a blur, faster than the eye could track, and severed its mask-core with a bare-fingered strike.
It disintegrated before it fully processed what had happened.
The Mundane man fell backward, eyes wide.
"Go," Shinra said. "Run toward the barrier. Don't look back."
He didn't ask twice.
Daren crashed into the remaining two entities, fists splitting their forms, while Hana cast a barrier behind the fleeing trio to catch stray strikes.
Yuna, not pausing, led them back toward the main vector of the anomalies.
"Authority strike team hasn't arrived yet," Hana said. "Their ETA keeps updating backwards—traffic blockage, delayed deployments."
"Which means we hold longer," Yuna said. "We're used to that."
[Master,] Arios said.
[I am reading a fluctuation at the core cluster. The anomalies are starting to synchronize.]
Explain, Shinra thought.
[Instead of competing for space, they are collapsing inward toward a shared center.]
[If they succeed, the combined Breach will be more stable—and more destructive.]
"How long?" he asked.
[Minutes. Less, if external interference resonates with them.]
They moved deeper into the Hub.
The closer they got to the main convergence, the more chaotic things became.
Silverline squads held a line on one elevated platform, their abilities forming neat, geometric constructs of light and force. Obsidian Crown members pushed hard on another side, their auras flaring aggressively as they tried to cut down anchors before they fully formed.
They were competent.
But they were fighting the Breaches' edges.
Shinra's gaze rose to the center.
Up above, where several rails intersected, the overlapping anomalies twisted together.
It looked like a storm of fractured mirrors, each piece reflecting a different angle of reality.
His breath slowed.
This…
[Yes, Great Master,] Arios said.
[This pattern is close. Very close to the terminal events of your era.]
A memory surfaced—unwanted, sharp.
A sky tearing open in several places at once. Land shattering. An entire capital swallowed by a hole that had no bottom. Wind howling without direction.
His own power flaring against something that didn't obey the rules of the world he knew.
Then—
Silence.
Seal.
Stone.
He opened his eyes fully.
"Can you trace this?" he asked under his breath, barely moving his lips.
[I can improve our model,] Arios said.
[But to truly trace it, I would need you to interact with the core at a higher output than we have used so far.]
"How much higher?" Shinra asked.
[At least double,] Arios said.
[Twelve to fifteen percent.]
He felt the seal on his power like a hand clamped on his throat. The memory of pain when he'd tried to reach his name flickered briefly.
"And if I do that," he said, "what happens to this place?"
[If you are not meticulous,] Arios said,
[it breaks.]
Ahead, Yuna halted behind partial cover, breathing hard.
Entities were thicker here—Dense clusters of mid-tier shades around coalescing anchor shapes. The air was so charged that even normal people would have tasted metal on their tongues.
"Unit 3," she said, "we hold this line here. Silverline has the upper platform. Obsidian Crown is pushing from the opposite side. If we break, entities spill into the lower transit levels and from there out into the housing grid."
Riku checked his ammo readout, then shook his head. "They're not thinning fast enough," he said.
"I can't put up more barrier layers and maintain them for long at this density," Hana said, jaw tight. "If the Breach spikes, some of it's going through."
"I can push," Daren said. "But not indefinitely."
Yuna's eyes flicked to Shinra.
"You said you wouldn't watch forever," she said. "We're approaching the part where 'forever' runs out."
Shinra looked up again.
The anomalies pulsed.
[If they synchronize fully,] Arios warned,
[this sector will suffer catastrophic damage before Authority can neutralize it.]
He could let it happen.
Let Authority deal with the aftermath. Let the world that had forgotten him learn what it meant to let its own systems drag their feet.
He looked sideways at Yuna, at Unit 3. At the other Sanctum members scattered along the line. At the Silverline squad patching a gap with careful skill. At the Obsidian Crown fighters, reckless but undeniably straining to hold their side.
At the shape of the sector around them—the people, the shops, the tired lives that would be snuffed out without ever knowing why.
"…Arios," he said inwardly. "If I push to fifteen percent, can you hold the seal?"
[I can try, Great Master.]
[You will feel pain. There is a risk of backlash. And the world will feel you.]
"It already does," he said.
He exhaled once.
Then he spoke loud enough for Yuna to hear.
"Can you keep your squad steady for a few moments?" he asked.
She blinked. "If we don't get flattened, yes," she said. "What are you—"
He stepped past the cover.
"Shinra!" Riku hissed.
Entities turned toward him instantly, sensing something shift.
The Breach above them throbbed, as if its attention had been drawn to this single point of stillness.
Shinra rolled his shoulders.
[Output increase in three…] Arios said.
[Two…]
He took hold of the power inside himself.
It fought him—no, the seal fought him. The constraints wrapped around his core tightened, trying to keep it contained.
He ignored them.
And pulled.
Pain lanced through him like hot metal driven into bone.
His vision flashed white at the edges, then cleared, leaving everything strangely sharp.
[Eight percent… ten… twelve… stabilizing—] Arios' voice glitched, momentarily distorted. […warning: structural strain on seal. Proceed with caution.]
The world reacted.
Every Ascendant in the immediate vicinity felt it. Not as a visible flare, not as a dramatic burst of light—but as a sudden, crushing awareness.
Weight fell on the Hub.
It wasn't the weight of stone or air.
It was the weight of notice.
Silverline casters staggered, constructs wavering.
Obsidian Crown fighters froze mid-swing, instincts screaming.
Yuna went completely still behind cover, eyes wide, breath catching.
Riku's grip on his rifles faltered for a split second. "What—" he choked.
Hana's knees nearly buckled before she slammed a new barrier into place on reflex, teeth clenched.
Daren swore softly, sweat breaking across his forehead.
"Stay down," Yuna rasped. "Don't break formation. Don't— move—"
Above, the overlapping Breaches convulsed.
The anomalies had structure. They drew from somewhere beyond this world, following patterns that didn't belong to it.
Shinra saw those patterns.
And he cut them.
Not with his hands, this time—but with something wider. A line that wasn't a line, a blade that wasn't a blade, dropping not through flesh or stone but through rules.
The Breach screamed.
The sound didn't reach their ears directly, but their bones felt it. Reality itself vibrated.
Thin fractures spidered across the combined anomaly, lines of emptiness slicing through places where nothing should have been.
[Resonance spike,] Arios said, voice loud in his mind to compensate for the roaring outside.
[Data capture…now.]
Shinra focused.
He didn't destroy the Breaches.
He rewrote where they were allowed to exist.
A section of the anomaly's core collapsed inward, like a lung forced to exhale. The overlapping points, once fighting for space, were shoved apart along invisible fractures until they no longer harmonized.
Entities poured out in agony—too many, too quickly.
Shinra moved.
At fifteen percent, the distance between him and things that shouldn't exist was very small.
His strikes weren't fancy. They didn't need to be.
He snapped through cores, erased mid-tier anchors mid-birth, redirected waves of raw Breach energy away from support lines.
Where his power passed, the tunnel-like feel of the Breach receded.
Where it didn't, chaos continued.
He couldn't cover everything without tearing the Hub apart by accident.
But he covered enough.
[Anomaly integrity dropping,] Arios said.
[Risk of sector-wide collapse decreasing. Risk of your exposure… increasing.]
Shinra could feel eyes.
Not just here.
Distant ones.
Devices monitoring energy spikes red-lined, then burned out. Authority scanners near the sector sparked, their readings jumping off scale before shutting down. Sensitive Ascendants in towers far away looked up, suddenly nauseous and alert.
He felt the seal creak.
Enough, he thought.
And let go.
Pulling back hurt in a different way.
The power that had been forced outward slammed against the inside of the seal like a storm against a wall, looking for a way out. Arios' presence wrapped around it like a hundred hands pushing at once.
[Stabilizing—] Arios said, voice strained.
[Fifteen… twelve… ten… eight…]
The pressure lessened.
The Hub breathed again.
Shinra's knees wanted to give out. He didn't let them.
He forced his breathing to steady.
He looked up.
The Breach cluster above them was no longer a storm of fractured mirrors.
It was a handful of cracks.
Still dangerous. But not catastrophic.
Entities remained, but far fewer, scattered and weakening without the same level of support.
All around, guild squads stared.
Silverline's lines firmed slowly as they regained their footing. Obsidian Crown's fighters shook off the instinctive fear and went back to cutting down the remnants, but their moves were a fraction more careful now.
On Sanctum's line, Unit 3 stood shaken but unbroken.
Riku swallowed hard.
"Okay," he said hoarsely. "Okay. So that's what not 'small' looks like."
Hana wiped sweat from her brow, hands trembling once before she forced them steady. "The energy… I've never felt anything like that," she said. "Our barrier metrics tanked and I wasn't even maintaining the front."
Daren exhaled slowly. "That felt like being under a landslide and realizing the mountain is looking at you," he muttered.
Yuna stepped out from cover, eyes fixed on Shinra.
He turned his head.
Their gazes met.
There was no awe in hers. No worship.
Just understanding—and something sharper.
"You hurt," she said quietly.
He blinked.
"How—"
She tilted her head slightly.
"You move differently when you're fine," she said. "You're… more relaxed inside your own skin. Right now it looks like you're holding your bones in place with will."
[She is very observant, Master,] Arios said weakly.
[Also, please do not repeat that without warning.]
Noted, Shinra thought.
He stood straighter.
"I'm functional," he said. "But I won't do that again today."
"I'd prefer if you didn't," Yuna said. She glanced up at the diminishing anomaly. "The Hub, on the other hand, is probably grateful."
Authority sirens wailed closer now.
Actual strike teams began to arrive—Ascendants in heavier gear, with more regimented formations. They slowed when they saw the state of the Hub—damaged but standing, Breach contracting instead of expanding.
One of them frowned at his band.
"My scanner fried," he muttered. "We got a classification ping halfway here and then nothing."
"Same," another said. "Just a massive spike, then blackout."
Their commanding officer's gaze swept the concourse, taking in the guilds on the ground.
His eyes lingered on Sanctum's line.
On Shinra.
He filed that away.
***
The rest of the fight was cleanup.
With the main structure of the overlapping Breaches broken, entities lost cohesion. They came apart under concerted fire—Sanctum, Silverline, Authority, and even Obsidian Crown all focusing on cutting them down before the anomaly could rethink its shape.
When it was finally over, the Hub was a mess.
Broken displays. Cracked flooring. Bits of Breach-scars that would need time and careful repair to fully fade.
But it was still there.
And more importantly, so were the people who lived above it.
Unit 3 regrouped near a column that hadn't quite crumbled.
Yuna checked them each with a quick look.
"Any serious injuries?" she asked.
Riku flexed his fingers. "Just shaken," he said. "My pride, mostly."
Hana took a slow breath. "No physical damage," she said. "Barrier strain is high. I'll need rest later."
Daren rolled his shoulders. "Bruises," he said. "Nothing more."
Yuna's eyes moved to Shinra.
He held her gaze.
"I already answered," he said. "Functional."
She nodded once, accepting it—for now.
Authority began to disperse squads into inspection and containment teams. Guild representatives started arguing quietly at the edges over who would get what credit in the official report.
Silverline's leader passed by Sanctum, giving Yuna a respectful nod.
Obsidian Crown's on-site commander, a woman with a sharp gaze and a scar across her jaw, paused a little longer.
Her eyes flicked over Unit 3.
Settled on Shinra.
Measured him.
Then she smiled—not kindly, not cruelly. Just… knowingly.
"So," she said. "That's Sanctum's Tier 1."
Yuna stepped forward slightly. "He is," she said. "And he's ours."
The commander's smile didn't waver.
"For now," she said.
She walked away.
Riku exhaled. "I hate it when they say things like that."
Daren grunted his agreement.
Hana's expression didn't change, but her fingers tightened slightly around her bracer.
Yuna glanced at Shinra again.
"You didn't just 'help' this time," she said quietly. "You changed the shape of the battlefield."
"That's what I was built to do," he said.
"That's what scares them," she replied.
[She's not wrong, Great Master,] Arios said.
[Preliminary external data: multiple sensors overloaded, readings categorized as "unknown phenomenon." Your presence is being logged as a possible anomaly in itself.]
Even with only fifteen percent, Shinra thought.
[Yes.]
And at eight?
[Still above their ceiling. Today proved that.]
He looked up at what remained of the Breach—a small wound now, healing slowly.
For a moment, his vision overlapped.
He saw the final sky of his era.
He saw this Hub.
Two worlds on the edge of the same knife.
He breathed out, long and slow.
"Eight percent is already too much for this age," he murmured.
Yuna heard him.
She didn't fully understand.
But she understood enough to answer.
"Then we'll make sure it doesn't have to be more," she said. "Not unless we have no other choice."
He glanced at her.
"That may not be up to us," he said.
"Maybe not," she agreed. "But we'll try anyway."
***
Later, back at Sanctum, Mizuki stared at the post-mission data.
Or rather, the lack of it.
"So every external scanner above a certain sensitivity burned out," she said. "Authority's included."
Kaizen lounged on the couch, a cooling pack over his eyes. "And the preliminary reports say what?" he asked.
She read from the screen.
"'Unidentified interference.' 'Possible anomaly within anomaly.' 'Recommend cautious monitoring of all Tier 1 Ascendants present.'"
He snorted. "They mean him."
"Yes," Mizuki said. "They very much mean him."
She flicked the report away.
"Even eight percent is too much," she said quietly.
Kaizen lowered the cooling pack and looked at her.
"Do you regret it yet?" he asked. "Taking him in?"
She thought about Yuna's squad coming back alive. About the Hub standing. About Lila not being among the casualty reports.
"No," she said. "But we'd be idiots not to be afraid."
"Of him?" Kaizen asked.
"Of what follows him," Mizuki said. "Things that care about the kind of power he carries."
Kaizen looked up at the ceiling.
"Then," he said, "we get stronger too."
"And if we can't match him?" she asked.
He smiled faintly.
"Then we stand beside him anyway," he said. "Sanctum doesn't exist to be comfortable."
Mizuki shook her head.
"…You picked a dangerous road," she murmured.
"He did too," Kaizen said. "At least we're walking it together."
***
In his dorm room, Shinra sat on the edge of his bed again.
This time, his hands trembled faintly when he looked at them.
The tremor wasn't fear.
It was the echo of the seal pushing back.
[Internal strain level: high,] Arios said softly.
[You forced the limiters beyond their recommended threshold.]
"I know," Shinra said.
[I will need time to redistribute the pressure,] Arios continued.
[Do not attempt that again soon. You may not like the result.]
"What about the data?" he asked. "You said you needed more."
He felt Arios shift in his mind, running through patterns too quickly for human thought.
[I have enough to be certain now,] Arios said finally.
[The Breaches in this era and the anomalies that ended your own world are not just similar. They are connected.]
"Same source?" Shinra asked.
[Same root, different branches,] Arios replied.
[Whatever erased your era did not stop working when you were sealed. It simply… spread out.]
Shinra leaned back against the wall, eyes on the ceiling.
"I thought so," he said. "But I prefer confirmation to hunches."
[We still lack the location of the root,] Arios added.
[But with each high-level Breach you interact with, the model will tighten.]
"So I keep walking into them," he said.
[Yes.]
Silence.
Then:
"Master," Arios said, voice softer. [Are you… afraid?]
Shinra thought about it.
He had been terrified once, long ago, when he realized there were things his power couldn't simply crush.
That fear had passed.
What remained now was something else.
"…I'm not afraid of the Breaches," he said. "I'm afraid of what happens to this era if we fail to stop what's feeding them."
[Even at eight percent?] Arios asked.
"Especially at eight percent," Shinra said. "If this is already too much for them, what happens if I have to stop holding back?"
He let that hang in the still air of the room.
Outside, the city lights continued to pulse.
Unseen, the cracks between worlds shifted.
And somewhere far beyond the Hub, beyond Sanctum, beyond the reach of Tier 1 and Authority both—
something that recognized the signature of his interference
stirred in a way that made distant Breaches shudder.
The era he had lost and the era that had forgotten him
were no longer as separate as they believed.
And for the first time in a thousand years,
the thing that had once erased his name
found a reason to look his way again.