Before a single shot could be fired, Leo looked up.
His golden irises narrowed—no, collapsed inward, like stars reaching the end of their lives. Light bent around them. The air itself seemed to hesitate, as if unsure whether it was still allowed to exist in his presence.
In that instant, the world broke its own rules.
Every machine on the perimeter—drones hovering in silent formation, automated turrets locked to biometric signatures, ground sensors buried beneath concrete and steel—short-circuited in perfect unison. Sparks burst outward like panicked insects. Metal screamed as systems fried from the inside out.
A pulse erupted from Leo.
Not sound. Not light.
Something deeper.
It rippled outward in a widening sphere, distorting space as it passed. The ground shuddered. Air compressed, then tore free, flattening dust and debris into expanding rings.
Soldiers froze mid-step. Some were lifted off their feet, suspended for a heartbeat before slamming back down. Targeting visors fractured into spiderwebs of glass. Radios howled with static before cutting dead. Rifles twisted in gloved hands as internal components warped under invisible pressure.
Iris grabbed Leo's sleeve, fingers digging in as the ground trembled beneath them. Her breath came sharp and fast.
"Leo… what's happening?"
He didn't look at her.
He didn't need to.
Above them, the sky split.
Not metaphorically.
The atmosphere tore open like thin fabric under impossible strain, revealing a vast, lightless expanse beyond. Edges of the rupture glowed faintly, fraying, as if reality itself were struggling to keep its shape.
From the void descended ships.
Obsidian-black. Colossal. Their surfaces weren't smooth so much as grown, etched with shifting patterns that hurt to follow with the eye. They hummed—not loudly, but deeply, a vibration felt in the chest rather than heard.
Around them coiled things that were not ships at all.
Entities folded through space in ways that made distance meaningless. Limbs intersected themselves. Eyes opened where there had been nothing moments before. Their movement left afterimages, as though the universe itself lagged behind them.
Cannons along the ships' hulls ignited, cores swelling with energy that bent light inward.
The swarm surged forward.
And Leo vanished.
No flash. No sonic boom. Just a sudden absence, like a word erased from a sentence.
A fraction of a second later—
BOOM.
The lead ship collapsed inward. Not exploded—imploded. Its massive hull folded like paper crushed by an invisible fist. Energy conduits ruptured, releasing molten light before being dragged back into the collapse. The structure disintegrated into a cloud of glowing fragments, scattering like cosmic ash.
The second ship followed. Then the third.
Some tried to veer away. Others fired blindly into empty space.
It didn't matter.
Each vessel failed differently—cracking apart along impossible angles, tearing itself open, or simply ceasing to function as if reality had revoked its permission to exist. Within heartbeats, the sky was littered with drifting wreckage, fading sparks, and silence.
On the ground, the remaining entities recoiled as one.
The air behind them distorted.
Leo reappeared.
He stood among them, feet planted lightly on fractured stone, golden eyes burning with steady, merciless intensity. His hair lifted as though underwater, drifting in slow, deliberate motion.
One step forward.
The ground fractured outward in a perfect ring. An invisible wave pulsed from his body, racing through the swarm.
Creatures convulsed mid-motion. Forms twisted, then unraveled, their cohesion failing as though the laws holding them together had been quietly undone. Some collapsed inward. Others simply fell apart, dissolving into nothing before they hit the ground.
A few resisted.
They lunged, shrieking without sound, claws and tendrils carving trenches through the air. The space around Leo distorted as attacks converged from multiple angles at once.
He didn't dodge.
He raised a hand.
Reality folded.
The space in front of him bent sharply, then snapped back. The charging entities hit an unseen boundary and shattered, their momentum turned against them, forms tearing apart as if struck by countless invisible blades.
One last creature remained.
Larger than the rest. Slower. Smarter.
It reared back, gathering itself, and launched forward in a desperate, all-consuming strike.
Leo met it with a single glance.
The creature froze.
Then collapsed, crushed by forces it couldn't perceive, its presence erased as though it had never been there at all.
Silence returned.
The battlefield lay ruined. The ground beneath Leo had cracked into a flawless circle, radiating outward from where he stood. The air shimmered, heavy, charged, struggling to settle back into normality.
Soldiers stared.
Weapons trembled in numb hands. Knees buckled. Some lowered their guns without realizing it. Others simply stood there, faces pale, staring at the undeniable truth before them.
This wasn't a weapon.
This wasn't a miracle.
This was something beyond comprehension.
And for the first time, a single thought united them all—
It was impossible…
to defeat him.