The world did not feel wrong.
That was the problem.
Morning arrived as it always had. Sunlight spilled across glass towers and rusted rooftops alike, oceans rolled in patient rhythm against stone, and the sky stretched wide and unbroken—too wide, too clean. Birds flew. Markets opened. Somewhere, a child laughed, sharp and bright, cutting cleanly through the air.
Nothing screamed.
Nothing warned.
At headquarters, the Awakened moved through routine with an unease none of them could name. It was not danger—not the familiar tightening in the chest that came before battle. It was absence. Like a breath held by the world itself.
Prime stood still in a corridor washed in pale light. Others passed him, armor humming faintly, voices low but normal. Normal enough to lie.
The mask on his face did not pulse. It did not whisper. It did not burn.
It simply watched.
Prime turned his head slightly, as if listening for something just out of reach. There was no sound to follow. No tremor beneath his feet. Yet the silence pressed in on him, heavier than any roar. A quiet so complete it felt deliberate.
Elsewhere—
A fisherman paused mid-cast, staring at the water as the waves flattened unnaturally, like a painting frozen before the brush lifted.
A pilot frowned at his instruments as every gauge read perfect. Too perfect.
A city street fell into a brief, collective stillness, strangers slowing in sync, hearts skipping for reasons they would later swear they never felt.
The calm stretched.
It did not break.
And for the first time since the Shattering, the Awakened felt nothing at all—
no pull of fate,
no echo of threat,
no distant scream carried on the fabric of reality.
Only a vast, patient quiet.
Prime's fingers curled slowly into a fist.
"This…" he muttered, voice barely more than breath, "…is wrong."
The world did not answer.
It was already moving.
It began with things that were easy to dismiss.
A flicker in the corner of the eye.
A sound that cut out mid-echo.
A step that landed a fraction of a second later than it should have.
At headquarters, Omega halted mid-stride. The faint glow along his armor dimmed, then returned, as if reality itself had blinked.
"…Did anyone else feel that?" he asked.
Tidal looked up from a holographic map, brows knitting together. "Feel what?"
Omega turned his head slowly, scanning the room. "For a moment, my systems desynced. Not damaged. Not interfered with. Just… off."
Core snorted softly, arms crossed. "You're overthinking. No alarms, no energy spikes. If something was wrong, we'd know."
Prime said nothing.
He had taken a step forward—and for the briefest instant, his foot did not touch the floor.
Then it did.
The sensation crawled up his spine like cold water. He glanced down, then at the corridor ahead. Everything looked intact. Solid. Real.
Too real.
Outside the headquarters, the sky rippled.
Not like clouds. Not like heat distortion. The blue itself wavered, folding inward and snapping back into place. No thunder followed. No shockwave. Just a silent correction.
On the street below, a woman stopped walking. Her shadow lagged behind her by a full second before snapping back under her feet.
She frowned.
Then laughed nervously.
Then kept going.
Across the city, sound hiccupped. Conversations cut out mid-sentence before resuming, words overlapping as if time had briefly lost track of itself. A glass slipped from someone's hand, froze inches from the ground, then shattered anyway—as if the fall had simply been delayed.
At HQ, Tidal finally felt it.
"…Okay," he said slowly, eyes narrowing. "That's not nothing."
Prime's mask warmed—not hot, not burning—just enough for him to notice. A faint pressure behind his eyes, like a presence leaning closer without touching.
No vision came.
No warning.
Only awareness.
"Prime?" Omega's voice sharpened. "You're staring."
Prime exhaled through his nose. "Something is… adjusting."
Core scoffed. "Adjusting what?"
Before Prime could answer, the floor beneath them gave a soft, sickening lurch. Not an earthquake—there was no violence in it. No force. The room simply tilted, as if the concept of down had briefly reconsidered its purpose.
Monitors flickered.
Not with static.
With emptiness.
For a fraction of a second, the screens showed nothing at all—not black, not white, but the absence of image itself. Then data rushed back in, faster than before, numbers scrambling to catch up.
Omega stepped forward, jaw tight. "That wasn't an anomaly."
Garuda's voice crackled in over comms from above the city. "I'm seeing disturbances in the upper air layers. Wind vectors are… looping. The sky doesn't know where it wants to be."
A pause.
Then, quieter: "That sentence should not make sense."
Prime finally spoke, voice low. "It makes sense if something isn't entering the world."
They all looked at him.
"It makes sense," Prime continued, "if the world is being rearranged."
Silence settled again—but this time, it was heavier. Intentional.
Outside, far beyond the city's edge, the horizon bent inward for a heartbeat… and somewhere deep beneath the earth, something shifted, as if a massive hand had pressed down on reality to test its resistance.
The first distortion had passed.
Whatever came next would not be subtle.
---
Far from the headquarters, far from the voices that could name what was happening, the world began to come apart.
Not violently.
Not yet.
From above, from a vantage no human eye could truly claim, the planet looked whole—blue, green, alive. Then lines appeared. Not cracks in the ground, but seams in reality itself, invisible until they were not.
A coastal city vanished without sound.
One moment it existed, lights glittering along the shoreline, waves curling faithfully against concrete. The next, an absence replaced it—a smooth, circular void where land, water, and air had been erased with surgical precision. The ocean did not rush to fill the space. The sky did not collapse inward.
Reality simply accepted the loss and moved on.
In another hemisphere, the sea convulsed. Not with heat, not with pressure, but with contradiction. Water rose into jagged spires, hanging suspended as if gravity had forgotten its role. Entire fleets were lifted, frozen in mid-motion, before being dragged downward into nothing at all.
Above a mountain range, the sky peeled open.
Layers of atmosphere folded back like pages of a book, revealing darker skies beneath—skies that did not belong to this world. Lightning crawled sideways through the exposed layers, illuminating shapes that should not have been visible from any angle.
Then the creatures came.
Not first.
Never first.
They emerged after the damage was done, crawling from fractures in space, rising from shadows that had gained depth, spilling out of places where the rules had already failed. Beasts of warped flesh and impossible geometry, their presence less an invasion and more a symptom.
Cities burned without fire.
Forests collapsed without wind.
Mountains sank as if tired of standing.
And everywhere, people ran.
Some screamed. Some prayed. Some froze, unable to process a catastrophe that arrived without announcement or reason. There were no sirens fast enough, no shelters deep enough.
High above the clouds, Garuda hovered, wings spread wide as turbulence tore at the sky around him. He could feel it now—the air resisting his command, the heavens no longer a loyal domain.
"This isn't weather," he said, voice tight. "The sky's being overwritten."
On the ground, Tidal stood knee-deep in rising water that should not have been there, pulling civilians toward higher ground as currents twisted against his will. "The ocean's fighting me," he growled. "Like it's answering to someone else."
Omega fired controlled beams into a collapsing district, carving escape routes through falling structures, containment fields snapping into place just long enough to matter. His calculations updated faster and faster, yet the variables kept multiplying.
"There are too many points of failure," he said grimly. "This isn't a single event."
Core watched a city block implode into itself, matter compressing, glowing, then detonating outward with enough force to shatter the horizon. His fists clenched as the familiar hunger of destruction burned in his chest.
"This is organized," he muttered. "Each zone follows a different rule."
And at the center of it all, Prime stood on fractured ground, mask reflecting a sky that no longer obeyed logic.
He could see the pattern now—not in numbers, not in visions, but in instinct.
This was not chaos.
This was enforcement.
Across the world, in places unseen and unnamed, the effects continued to spread—measured, deliberate, unstoppable.
The fracture had gone global.
And the world was already losing.
---
They did not arrive together.
They never would have.
Across the world, the distortions sharpened—each one stabilizing into a territory with its own rules, its own gravity, its own quiet declaration of ownership. The planet became a board, and the pieces were already placed.
In the deep ocean, pressure spiked without warning. Entire trenches collapsed inward as the seafloor rose to meet the surface. Currents twisted into violent spirals, dragging everything toward a single, unmoving point.
Tidal felt it immediately.
His breath hitched as water answered a will that was not his. The sea did not rage—it endured, reshaping itself into walls and pillars, ancient and unmoved.
"…Gaia," he said under his breath.
Far inland, continents groaned.
The ground rolled like a living thing, plates grinding together in deliberate motion. Cities were lifted, not destroyed—raised and set aside like insignificant debris. Stone answered stone. Earth remembered its oldest master.
Core staggered as the land beneath him hardened against his presence, resisting the heat that had once bent mountains. His flames burned, but the world did not yield.
"So," he growled, staring at the rising terrain, "this is how you fight."
Above the clouds, the sky fractured into violent layers.
Wind screamed in opposing directions, ripping open corridors of thin air and crushing pressure. Garuda struggled to keep altitude as the heavens twisted, no longer a domain to command but a battlefield already claimed.
A figure stood suspended in the storm, wings torn between light and shadow, blades catching the lightning.
Ashura had chosen the sky.
In the heart of a sprawling megacity, space itself failed.
Buildings vanished mid-structure, erased as if they had never existed. Streets ended abruptly in nothingness. Sound collapsed into dead silence within expanding spheres of void.
Omega felt his systems scream as data ceased to exist. No energy readings. No aftermath. Just absence.
Zero's influence spread quietly, mercilessly.
And somewhere else—nowhere specific, everywhere at once—misfortune accumulated.
Resistance made things worse.
Every attempt to stabilize, to fight back, to interfere, resulted in catastrophic escalation. Structures collapsed because they were reinforced. Shields detonated because they were raised.
Calamity did not need to appear.
Its law was enough.
Prime felt them all at once.
Not their faces.
Not their voices.
Their rules.
Each distortion followed a principle. Each battlefield obeyed a different truth. And those truths were spreading outward, pushing the Awakened apart without ever touching them.
"They're dividing us," Prime said quietly, standing amid a city that no longer obeyed perspective.
No one answered.
They were already too far away.
Across the world, the Abyssal Order had taken their positions.
Not to attack.
To wait.
And in doing so, they made one thing terrifyingly clear:
This war would not be fought together.
... --- ...
Orders were spoken through fractured comms, voices cutting in and out beneath layers of interference and distance. Omega rerouted signals through satellites that were already half-erased. Garuda relayed positions from a sky that kept rewriting its own altitude. Prime listened, calculated, hesitated.
"Hold position," Omega said, strain evident beneath his control. "If we push forward blindly, we lose coordination."
Tidal braced himself against a collapsing shoreline, water roaring around him as if offended by his presence. "If I don't move, this city sinks. I can't just—"
The transmission dissolved into static.
Core slammed a fist into the ground, heat flaring uselessly against stone that refused to crack. "The terrain's adapting. Every second we wait, it gets worse."
Garuda's voice came next, sharp and breathless. "Ashura's not advancing. He's anchoring. If I retreat, the sky collapses behind me."
Prime closed his eyes.
The pattern was undeniable now.
Each Opposite had chosen a domain and locked it in place. The longer the Awakened avoided direct engagement, the more the world around them deteriorated. Rescue routes vanished. Safe zones inverted into death traps. Stability itself became hostile.
Avoidance was no longer caution.
It was surrender.
Prime opened his eyes. The mask reflected a fractured skyline, possibilities splitting and collapsing faster than he could track. No future unfolded where they regrouped. No path existed where they fought side by side again—not without losing everything before the battle even began.
"They've designed this," Prime said into the comms, voice steady despite the weight pressing down on him. "Each of them is a lock. The world doesn't move forward until the lock is broken."
Silence followed.
Then Omega spoke, quieter now. "…You're saying we engage."
"Yes," Prime replied. "Individually."
Core exhaled sharply, something between a laugh and a growl. "Figures."
Tidal hesitated. "And if we lose?"
Prime did not answer immediately.
"If we don't fight," he said at last, "we lose anyway."
Around the world, each Awakened felt the truth of it settle in their bones.
Garuda tightened his grip on the air itself and turned toward the figure waiting in the storm.
Tidal stepped forward into waters that no longer recognized him as their master.
Core let the heat rise, even as the earth pushed back.
Omega recalibrated, locking onto a void that could not be measured.
Prime stood alone in a city folding in on itself, the mask heavy on his face.
"This isn't a team battle anymore," he said, more to himself than to them. "It's a series of answers."
One by one, the comms went silent—not from failure, but from decision.
Across the planet, lines were crossed.
The Awakened advanced.
And at last, the Abyssal Order did not wait any longer.
~•\__/•~
The ocean answered first.
Tidal stood at the edge of a shattered coastline, waves towering unnaturally behind him, frozen mid-crest as if awaiting permission to fall. The water no longer moved with him—it measured him. Every step forward was met with resistance, currents twisting against his legs, pressure bearing down like a judgment.
Far out at sea, the land itself rose.
Stone breached the surface in massive slabs, ancient and unyielding, forming a path that cut cleanly through the water. At its end stood a figure, unmoving, patient—earth given will.
Tidal inhaled slowly, steadying his breath.
"So you're the one holding it all in place," he said, voice carrying over the churning deep. "Let's see how long stone remembers how to drown."
He stepped forward.
In the heart of the collapsing city, Omega advanced through zones that no longer existed.
Entire streets vanished between steps. Buildings erased themselves mid-fall, leaving nothing behind—not rubble, not dust, not even air. His sensors screamed uselessly, feeding him data that contradicted itself faster than he could process.
Ahead, a perfect sphere of absence expanded, swallowing light, sound, and matter alike.
Zero stood within it.
Omega raised his arm, energy condensing along precise vectors. "You erase," he said calmly. "I calculate what remains."
The void pulsed in response.
Omega fired.
High above the world, where the sky tore itself into layers, Garuda fought to remain aloft.
Wind howled in conflicting directions, ripping at his wings, crushing and lifting him at the same time. Lightning crawled sideways through fractured clouds, illuminating a lone figure suspended effortlessly in the storm.
Ashura's blades gleamed—one radiant, one steeped in shadow.
Garuda wiped blood from his lip and laughed softly. "Guess there's no higher ground left."
He spread his wings wider, forcing the sky to remember him.
"Then we settle this here."
The ground beneath Core cracked—not from heat, but from defiance.
Mountains shifted around him, walls of stone rising and reforming endlessly, adapting to every burst of flame he unleashed. The earth was not breaking. It was learning.
Ahead, the terrain shaped itself into a towering figure, continents layered into a single form.
Core's grin was sharp, almost feral. "You think you can outlast me?"
His body burned brighter, hotter, reckless.
"Let's find out who breaks first."
And in a city folding in on itself, Prime stood alone.
Reality bent around him—buildings stretching into impossible angles, streets looping back into themselves, the horizon fractured into overlapping versions of the same moment. The mask weighed heavier than ever, its surface reflecting futures that collapsed before he could grasp them.
He took a step forward.
The air thickened.
Somewhere beyond sight, Paradox watched.
Prime's hand trembled—not from fear, but from the strain of choosing a path with no certainty. His breath slowed, mind sharpening, focus narrowing.
"This is it," he murmured. "No more distance."
For the first time since the March began, something stirred beneath his skin.
A faint pressure in his palm.
A shape pressed outward, forming briefly—
a mouth.
It did not scream.
It smiled.
At last, Exe whispered, voice curling through Prime's thoughts. Now the world gets interesting.
The silence shattered.
And across the world, five battles began at once.