They circled each other like mountains deciding which would fall first.
Both fully transformed. Both terrifying. Wrong Maya's form was sleeker, more controlled—her spikes aligned, her armor seamless, her movements economical. Maya was rougher, wilder, her body built for tearing and being torn.
Wrong Maya struck first.
Her claws raked across Maya's chest, opening deep furrows. Maya answered with a tail strike that caught Wrong Maya in the ribs, sending her stumbling. They came together again—teeth, claws, spikes, all of it.
Wrong Maya was better.
Her control was absolute. Every movement was precise, every attack calculated. She bit down on Maya's arm and pulled. The joint gave. The arm came away.
Maya screamed.
Wrong Maya didn't stop. Her jaws found Maya's shoulder, crunched through the armor, through the bone, through everything. Another limb fell.
Maya fell to her knees.
Wrong Maya loomed over her, blood dripping from her mouth, her eyes cold and empty.
Maya lunged upward. Her teeth found Wrong Maya's throat. She bit down and ate—not just tore, not just wounded, but consumed. Flesh and blood and something else, something that tasted like herself.
Wrong Maya staggered back.
---
The white space was quiet.
Maya and Helena stood facing each other, their forms human, their clothes simple. Outside, their body was dying. Inside, they had seconds to decide.
"Berserk," Maya said.
Helena's eyes were calculating. "No."
Maya blinked. "What?"
"I have a better idea.We don't survive by losing control. We survive by becoming something better.""
---
Maya's body shrank.
The transformation didn't reverse—it condensed. The massive, hulking form collapsed inward, becoming smaller, denser, more concentrated. Scales remained. Armor remained. The tail remained, long and whip-like, lashing behind her. Her hair had become something else—long black spines that swept back from her skull like a crown.
One eye was full black. One eye was full white.
Her pulse skyrocketed.
Wrong Maya's monster instincts screamed. Every hair on her body stood up. Every nerve fired at once. The thing in front of her wasn't just an opponent. It was an apex. It was the thing that apex predators dreamed about.
Maya vanished.
She appeared on Wrong Maya's shoulder, standing there like she'd been there all along, and punched.
The impact sent Wrong Maya flying. She crashed through trees, through rocks, through the earth itself, leaving a trench a mile long. The ground trembled. The world cried out.
Every monster on the continent felt it.
A new monstrosity. A fully released Omega. No Omega like this had ever existed.
Was born.
Maya emerged in front of Wrong Maya, who was still struggling to rise, her armor cracked, her body broken. Maya's other hand came down—a punch that shattered Wrong Maya's chest, that opened a hole where her heart should have been.
She didn't stop.
Punch after punch, faster than thought, harder than anything she'd ever thrown. Wrong Maya's body came apart under the onslaught—armor shattering, bones breaking, flesh tearing.
Crack.
Maya's own bones broke.
The transformation began to reverse. Scales receded. Spines softened. Her body was shrinking, failing, giving out. She stood over Wrong Maya's corpse—her own corpse, her own face, her own dead eyes—breathing heavily.
Some scales still clung to her. Some armor still covered her.
She had killed herself.
She had killed herself.
Her breathing came faster. Her chest heaved. Her vision blurred.
I just killed myself.
The forest was quiet. The battle was over. Maya stood alone among the ruins, staring at her own dead face, and felt something she couldn't name.
Panic. Horror. Grief. All of them. None of them.
She had killed herself.
It didn't feel like killing an enemy.
It felt like ending a version that deserved to live.
And she didn't know how to feel about that.