The sirens didn't howl.
The city was smarter than that now.
Instead, a soundless pulse moved through it—bands buzzing, screens flashing, emergency lines lighting up with the same two words:
CATASTROPHE ALERT.
The streets outside Sanctum were already shifting by the time Unit 3 reached the front doors.
Traffic lights froze on red.
Automated vehicles rerouted themselves away from the central districts. Drones zipped upward in synchronized arcs, switching their lenses to wide-area feeds. Public displays cut from ads and chatter to official evacuation instructions.
"Remain calm. Proceed to nearest shelter."
"Do not approach the Convergence Zone."
"All guilds: respond per protocol."
Shinra felt the change like a pressure wave.
Not just in the air.
In the fabric of things.
[Anomaly magnitude is off the charts,] Arios said, voice clipped.
[The Breach isn't a point. It's a complex. Multiple fractures stacked.]
Like the Hub? Shinra thought.
[Worse,] Arios replied.
[The Hub was improvising. This feels… deliberate.]
Kaizen and Mizuki met them at the entrance.
Kaizen was already in full combat harness—a sleek version of Sanctum's uniform with reinforced seams and a weapon resting easily across his back. A faint grin tugged at his mouth, the kind that appeared when things were about to get far too serious.
Mizuki wore lighter gear, tablet in hand, hair tied back tight. Her eyes flicked between Unit 3 and the tactical overlays projected in the air.
"Convergence Zone?" Yuna asked.
"Center of the city," Mizuki confirmed. "Near the old transit nexus. Authority's marking it as a Class Red event. They're pulling every Tier 1 they can find."
"Other guilds?" Daren asked.
"Obsidian Crown and Apex Radiant are already en route," she said. "Some smaller ones too. This is… everyone."
Kaizen's gaze settled on Shinra.
"Authority didn't ask for you by name," he said. "But they didn't have to. You're going."
"Obviously," Shinra said.
"Good," Kaizen said. "Would've been awkward if you wanted a day off."
Riku made a strangled sound that might've been a laugh.
Mizuki tapped her tablet, sending data to their bands.
"The initial projections show a central core and multiple satellite fractures," she said. "We'll aim for perimeter support at first—keep it from spreading while Authority and the more… politically palatable guilds handle the front line."
"Politically palatable," Riku repeated. "We really need a better PR team."
"Later," Mizuki said. "Right now, we don't die."
Yuna rolled her shoulders.
"Unit 3, formation on Kaizen," she said. "Shinra, you're with us unless we say otherwise."
Shinra inclined his head.
"I'll try not to turn the city inside-out," he said.
"Please do," Mizuki replied. "I like my maps accurate."
They stepped out into the shifting city.
The transport Sanctum used was not sleek or pretty.
It was a matte, armored carrier with enough shielding to survive a decent explosion and enough thrust to ignore most traffic regulations.
They piled in.
Kinetic dampeners hummed as the vehicle lifted, slid sideways, then shot forward above the lower level of streets, weaving between taller structures.
The city below flowed.
People moved toward shelters, some running, some stubbornly walking. Drones hovered like insects, cameras trained toward the invisible center. Advertisements flickered out, replaced by status feeds and evacuation routes.
From this vantage, Shinra could feel the distortion even before he saw it.
A heavy weight in the distance, like a bruise in the air.
[We're still a few kilometers out,] Arios said.
[And the anomaly's pressure reaches us here. Not ideal.]
You've used that phrase a lot lately, Shinra thought.
[I miss having better options,] Arios replied.
"Status?" Yuna called toward the front.
The driver—one of Sanctum's support Ascendants, a quiet man with reflexes like liquid—didn't look back.
"Convergence Zone is locked down," he said. "Authority's formed an outer ring. Guild transports are being routed to designated entry points. We're slotted on the west side. Arrival in… sixty seconds."
"Any visual?" Riku asked.
"Up front," the driver said.
Shinra shifted forward enough to see through the reinforced viewport.
The Breach was not a hole this time.
It was a dome.
A translucent, seething sphere of distorted space, anchored over the central district like a malignant bubble. It swallowed streets, buildings, a park, a transit hub—more territory than the Hub anomaly had ever touched.
Its surface rippled, colors and shadows sliding like oil on water.
Stray arcs of energy snapped outward, dissipating before they could travel far.
"Big," Daren said, which was putting it mildly.
"Looks like a snow globe from hell," Riku muttered.
Yuna's jaw clenched.
"Authority's ring?" she asked.
"Visible," the driver said.
As they approached, Shinra saw them—lines of uniforms, both Mundane and Ascendant, positioned behind barricades and shield projectors. Authority vehicles formed a secondary wall. Sensor towers bristled like makeshift spines.
Between that ring and the Breach dome, guild emblems glowed.
They landed in a designated zone marked with a floating identifier: SANCTUM — WEST ENTRY.
The carrier's doors opened with a hydraulic hiss.
Heat and distortion rolled in.
They stepped out into organized chaos.
The ground vibrated underfoot.
Not from explosions.
From pressure.
The dome loomed just ahead, a towering wall of shimmering distortion, close enough now that Shinra could see things moving inside—jagged shapes, flickering silhouettes, flashes of light.
Guild squads clustered along the approach roads.
Sanctum was not alone in their section.
Obsidian Crown had their own staging area a short distance away—dark uniforms, controlled auras. Arisa stood at their head, coat caught by a stray gust, eyes on the dome.
Further along, Apex Radiant's contingent gleamed—brighter armor, polished emblems. Their leader, Sol, stood out like a star even without flaring his aura—tall, sharp-eyed, radiating a confident intensity.
Authority officers moved between the groups, bands streaming data.
Ryou was among them.
He spotted Sanctum, said something quickly to his aide, and changed direction.
"Sanctum," he said as he approached. "You're in."
"We gathered that," Kaizen said lightly. "Would've been awkward if we came here for the scenery."
Ryou didn't smile, but the corner of his mouth flicked.
He handed Mizuki a compressed data band.
"Current readouts," he said. "Multiple high-tier entities already loose inside. The dome is acting as a containment layer—for now. If its integrity fails, we're looking at flow in all directions."
"Not an option," Mizuki said.
"Agreed," Ryou replied.
His gaze settled briefly on Shinra.
He didn't flinch.
"Tier 1?" he asked, voice lower.
"Present," Shinra said.
Ryou gave the slightest nod.
"Use him if you must," he told Kaizen and Yuna. "But the more he pushes, the more this thing will try to respond. We don't know what its full capacity is."
"We don't know his either," Kaizen said.
"That's what worries me," Ryou said.
He turned away to address the assembled guild leaders.
"Everyone," he called.
Conversations dipped.
Eyes turned.
"The anomaly is designated Catastrophe-tier," Ryou said. "This is beyond single-guild containment. Authority will maintain the outer perimeter and coordinate civilian movement. Inside the dome, guilds lead."
He glanced at Sol first.
"Apex Radiant, you'll take north entry," he said. "Your mobility units are best suited for maneuvering through the transit structures."
Sol nodded once.
"Obsidian Crown," Ryou continued, looking at Arisa. "You take south. Your heavy cadres will hold that side's structural line."
Arisa inclined her head.
"Sanctum," Ryou said, turning back. "You're west. Flex position. Support both fronts, plug any collapse points. Your low-tier support and barrier specialists are… uniquely effective in this type of environment."
"And our Tier 1?" Kaizen asked mildly.
Ryou's eyes flicked to Shinra once more.
"When necessary," he said. "For critical strikes only. The more he asserts himself, the more data this thing—and whatever's behind it—gets."
"Understood," Yuna said.
Ryou stepped back.
"You have authority inside the dome until further notice," he said to the leaders. "After that… we improvise."
Sol looked at the dome, head tilted.
"Feels heavier than it looks," he said. "You sure it's not already past what we can handle?"
Arisa's aura flared just a little, dark and clean.
"If it is," she said, "we'll find out the hard way."
"Cheerful as always," Kaizen said.
He clapped his hands once, drawing Sanctum's focus.
"You heard the man," he said. "We're the plug. Yuna, Unit 3—you're with me. Shinra, you stay on Yuna unless she throws you somewhere. Everyone else, don't die."
"Very inspirational," Riku muttered.
"Write it on my statue," Kaizen said.
Then they moved.
They entered the dome through a breach already carved in its skin—an aperture held open by a combination of Authority tech and high-tier Ascendant power.
Passing through felt like pushing through thick glass.
The air changed.
Sound warped.
Inside, the world was wrong.
The central transit district, usually a maze of clean-lined platforms, skyrails, and open plazas, resembled a half-remembered painting smeared by a careless hand.
Buildings bent at angles that didn't match their foundations. Rail lines twisted upward into arcs that went nowhere. Holographic signs flickered with fragmented text, stuttering between languages and symbols.
The sky was… wrong.
Not fully visible, but fractured into shards of color near the top of the dome, as if someone had cut pieces out and replaced them with glitching static.
And moving through all of it—
Entities.
Not the weak shambles that spilled from small fractures.
These were larger, heavier, more coherent.
Some walked on too many limbs, masks fused to armored, plate-like bodies. Others floated, cloaked in shadow, shapes shifting beneath as if they wore their real forms underneath like secrets.
Apex Radiant's squads were already clashing with a cluster near the northern platforms, beams of light slicing through twisted limbs. Obsidian Crown's south contingent held a line along a damaged street, their blows compact and precise, power concentrated in sharp bursts.
Sanctum's west entry opened onto a plaza that had been partially torn open. A fountain was frozen mid-collapse, water hanging in impossible arcs before being drawn toward a minor fracture and vanishing.
"Formation!" Yuna called. "Hana, barriers! Riku, left flank! Daren, with me!"
Shinra slid in behind them, not at the back, not at the front—just off-center, where he could see and move without becoming the first thing every enemy looked at.
He didn't have that luxury for long.
The nearest entity turned.
Its mask—white, featureless, yet somehow intent—tilted.
It scuttled forward, body low, limbs stabbing into cracked stone.
"First wave!" Yuna snapped.
Her spear manifested in her hand in a flare of light, tip already thrusting toward the thing's mask.
It caught the spear on an armored forelimb, the impact ringing like metal on stone. The force still shoved it back, claws gouging tracks in the ground.
Daren crashed into it from the side, shoulder slamming into its body. It rocked, limbs skidding, attention divided.
Riku's shot took the mask out a heartbeat later.
The creature dissolved.
No time to celebrate.
More moved.
They didn't come in a blind rush.
They flowed.
One dropped from a twisted rail beam above, claws reaching for Hana—
Shinra stepped in, hand flicking upward.
He didn't unleash power.
He just reoriented a patch of space.
The entity's trajectory bent sideways at the last instant, sending it crashing into a pillar instead of Hana's back.
Hana shot him a brief, startled look, then snapped a barrier into place around the next incoming swipe.
Remind them you are here, he thought. Just enough.
[Your interference radius is growing,] Arios warned.
[Even minimal acts echo further now.]
Noted, Shinra replied.
He moved.
He wasn't the spearpoint.
Yuna was.
But any entity that slipped through the edges of Sanctum's pattern found its path skewed—stepping into pockets of slowed space, limbs dragged just enough off-line that Riku's bullets and Daren's fists landed clean.
"West plaza stabilizing," Hana called between breaths. "For now."
"Push toward the center," Yuna said. "We link with the others or we get overwhelmed when this thing changes its mind."
They advanced, cutting through crooked streets and half-collapsed corridors.
Everywhere, battle.
Apex Radiant's mobility units darted between warped structures, blasting entities off precarious ledges. Obsidian Crown's heavy lines anchored key intersections, their blows more like surgical demolitions than wild strikes.
Shinra saw Sol at one point—standing on the broken edge of a transit platform, arm outstretched, light coalescing around his hand before lancing out in a focused beam that pierced three entities in a row.
He saw Arisa a few streets over, sword carving arcs that cut through not just bodies but the faint distortions around them, severing connections that tried to regrow.
The three guilds were not a single organism.
But they moved like parts of one.
And for a time, that was enough.
Minutes blurred.
The initial wave broke.
Entities grew fewer, then rarer. The Breach's surface above went from constant turbulence to an uneasy simmer.
"Readings?" Yuna asked, taking a breath as they ducked briefly into a comparatively stable corridor to regroup.
Hana checked her band.
"Local entity density dropping," she said. "No new fractures in our sector. Apex Radiant reports partial containment on their side. Obsidian Crown's southern line is holding. Authority's outer grid is stable."
"So," Riku said, "are we allowed to hope now, or is that still forbidden?"
"Keep it small," Daren grunted.
Kaizen appeared at their flank, weapon resting against his shoulder, light sweat on his brow. A smear of something dark stained his sleeve.
"You're doing well," he said. "The dome's internal pressure has decreased by twelve percent since we came in."
"Twelve?" Riku repeated. "Feels like we've murdered at least thirty."
"Thirty times a small fraction is still a fraction," Kaizen said.
Mizuki's voice came through their bands.
[All teams. Temporary stabilization reported in multiple sectors. Do not overextend. Remember: Catastrophe-tier anomalies have second phases.]
Riku groaned.
"She had to say it," he said. "She had to."
Yuna rolled her neck.
"Second phases?" she asked.
Shinra's eyes hooded.
"Yes," he said.
She glanced at him.
"How do they work?" she asked.
"In my era?" he said. "Badly."
"Helpful," Riku muttered.
[The anomaly hasn't revealed its core yet,] Arios said quietly in Shinra's mind.
[We are still fighting its surface phenomena. This is misdirection. A test of response.]
And we're passing, Shinra thought.
[Which means it can calibrate its next move more accurately,] Arios replied.
Yuna read her band again, then looked up.
"Apex Radiant says they're close to securing a path to what might be the center," she said. "Obsidian Crown's pushing inward along their line too. We converge, we shut the core, we go home. That's the plan."
"It's a good plan," Kaizen said. "Plans rarely survive contact with reality, but we love them anyway."
Shinra looked toward the direction the center must lie.
He couldn't see it.
But he could feel something.
A weight.
A… presence.
Familiar in the same way a scar is familiar—a ghost of old pain.
[Something is watching through this structure,] Arios said.
[Not just blindly chewing. Measuring.]
Me? Shinra asked.
[You,] Arios confirmed.
[And everyone standing near you.]
He straightened.
"Then let it watch," he said.
Yuna's mouth twitched.
"We'll give it something worth looking at," she said.
They joined the others near what passed for the heart of the dome.
Or rather, where the streets widened into a shattered plaza that had once been the main entrance to the transit nexus.
Now, the nexus tower leaned at an angle, its screens shattered, its support struts twisted. The ground was cracked, lines spiderwebbing out from a central point where the Breach's influence still pulsed the strongest.
Apex Radiant had formed one flank, their units spread in a semi-circle. Obsidian Crown held the opposite side, their formation tighter, denser.
Sanctum slotted into the space between.
Shinra found himself standing in a rough line with Sol, Arisa, and Kaizen—all within a few steps of each other, each with their squads fanned out behind.
Authority's presence was reduced inside the dome, but Ryou had come in.
He stood near one of the shattered pillars at the edge of the plaza, sensor unit in hand, eyes on the distortion ahead.
"Readings?" Mizuki's voice asked through the shared channel.
Ryou glanced at his device.
"Surface turbulence minimal," he said. "Internal fluctuation… rising. There's a secondary structure forming beneath the primary anomaly. Like a… cocoon."
"That's not a word I enjoy," Riku muttered.
"It rarely precedes anything pleasant," Hana agreed.
Sol took a step forward, hands loose at his sides.
"Entities?" he asked.
"Scattered," Ryou said. "We're picking up clusters, but they're not pressing. Almost like they're being… held back."
"Waiting for the main event," Arisa said.
Kaizen exhaled.
"Well," he said. "Let's not be rude hosts."
He looked at Yuna.
"Keep your team ready to plug the gaps," he said. "Shinra…"
"Yes," Shinra said.
"Same rule," Kaizen said. "Hit hard if you must. Try not to rewrite any laws of physics we rely on."
"I'll be gentle," Shinra said.
Yuna gave him a side-eye that said: You have no concept of that word.
The plaza held a strange, tense stillness.
Entities prowled at the fringe, but did not cross an invisible boundary. The Breach's internal glow shifted from chaotic to… patterned. Lines of light, too bright to stare at directly, began tracing shapes within.
[It's reorganizing,] Arios narrated quietly.
[Collapsing surface-level processes. Allocating resources elsewhere.]
Elsewhere where? Shinra asked.
[To whatever it's bringing through next.]
"Feels like the calm in the middle of a storm," Sol said.
"This is not the calm," Arisa said. "This is the inhale."
Ryou's scanner chimed.
He glanced at it, then stiffened.
"Be ready," he said. "Core shift in three… two…"
The ground shuddered.
Not the tremor from earlier, the one that just persisted like a hum.
This was a pulse—deep, resonant, enough to make dust jump from broken surfaces.
The air at the center of the plaza thickened.
A point formed.
Not a tear.
A node.
Shinra knew, before it fully formed, that whatever came next would not be just another entity.
His head rang.
His vision flickered.
For a heartbeat, the plaza vanished.
He stood in a different space—a room of carved stone, a shattered throne, an empty world beyond.
He heard a voice, distant and near.
"Shi—"
He forced his focus back to the present.
The node blossomed.
Outward.
Upward.
Into something that wore the Breach's wrongness like a coat.
Not yet fully visible.
Just a silhouette.
Huge.
Wrong.
Laughing, silently, in the tilt of its head.
[Core manifestation,] Arios said, words hard.
[This is what the surface fight was distracting us from.]
The real enemy, Shinra thought.
Around him, Ascendants instinctively shifted stances.
Sanctum, Obsidian Crown, Apex Radiant, Authority—it didn't matter.
For a moment, they were just people facing a shape that promised an end.
"Is everyone seeing this?" Riku whispered.
"Yes," Yuna said.
"Good," he said faintly. "I was worried it was just my nightmares catching up."
Kaizen's usual grin was gone.
Sol's jaw was set.
Arisa's eyes had narrowed to slits.
Ryou's grip tightened on his scanner until his knuckles went white.
The thing kept forming.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Like it knew they needed time to feel how small they were.
"Second phase," Shinra said quietly.
Yuna glanced at him.
"How bad?" she asked.
He watched the shape coalesce, the weight of its presence bearing down on the plaza, on the dome, on the city.
For a heartbeat, he felt very old.
"Bad enough," he said, "that this line can't break."
The entity opened eyes that were not eyes.
And looked straight at him.
The dome held.
The world did, too.
For now.