The air over the broken city folded in — folding up like origami. Lines of light pulsated in a spiral, from which a lone figure clad in white descended.
No parachute. No sound. Only gravity was bowing to code.
As dust they didn't throw up when their boots struck the ground — it was a vapor, disintegrating into the air around them. The figure was humanoid, but their eyes were the wrong kind of still — too steady, too aware.
"Field integrity at sixty-two percent," they said under their breath. "Containment window: closing."
They looked up.
There — right across the shattered square — stood the Night Reaper, her body bathed in the storm's glow, Ian a few meters behind, torn between reaching out and running.
The figure activated their visor. Extend dozens of readings including: Heart-rate anomaly detected. Data fusion unstable. Subject: Elaine Odili.
"You have exceeded your limit," they said softly, the voice echoing through both air and network. "You should not exist."
Elaine turned, eyes blazing. "And yet here I am."
The figure cocked their head. "Not for long."
They drew a blade that hummed with the pulse of life — not forged iron, but light solidified into shape. The sound made Ian flinch.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"The one to stop her before she ends what's left of your world."
Elaine raised her scythe. "Then you have to kill me first."
The smile on the figure's face was — minuscule, almost melancholic.
"That's just what the Protocol said you'd say."
The storm broadened. Code rained down, evaporating into light all around them. The opening strike split the ground — a silent blast that rattled the two worlds.
The invader hit first.
Their blade inscribes a line in the air — pure energy, silent, fast, ruthless.
Elaine parried, but the strike was not physical. "It hit her code."
A blast of static roared through her, freezing her feet in place as the Core within her raced to rewrite what had been lost.
"You're not used to existing on two frequencies," the figure said calmly as he closed the distance between them. "Flesh and code. One day, the other will eat the other."
Elaine tightened her jaw. "Then I'll make them coexist."
Her scythe vibrated — a wave of black steel folding into layered data, each arc leaving shadows luring ghosts catching up to ghosts. She lunged.
The ground broke.
Light and shadow clashed.
Each time their weapons touched, the city would respond — bits of buildings levitating, frozen like pieces of a dream reluctant to shatter. The Core's pulse grew louder, almost like it was watching, learning and feeding.
Ian began to approach, but the distortion ripping through the space between the worlds was too violent. All he could do when he saw his sister and the stranger vanish into streaks of blue and white — each strike bending the laws of physics — was stare.
Then — the invader broke through her guard. One slash tore through the data light surrounding Elaine and pierced her shoulder. The wound didn't bleed — it glitched.
She gasped.
For a moment, her voice was two voices — one human, one digital.
"You think pain will stop me?"
"No," said the intruder. "But it could help you remember what you are."
They pressed a hand to the earth. The soil as it were turned in on itself, folding upward in hundreds of soil spikes that came at her like spears.
Elaine whirled her scythe in a broad sweep, calling forth a tide of black code that smashed them in mid-air. The blast illuminated the skyline as a second sunrise — blue on crimson.
Ian covered his eyes. "Elaine!"
No longer a whisper, but command, her voice boomed out across the storm.
"I'm the Reaper. I don't follow rules — I rewrite them."
The intruder looked up, realization dawning.
"She's… stabilizing."
The Core's hum changed tone. Across the sky, lines of light danced, weaving patterns that resembled a sprawling web. Then, before anyone could react—
—and everything stopped.---