The floating cathedral drifted in the void like a broken crown. Its marble pillars suspended in nothingness, stained-glass windows glowing without a sun.
Beneath its fractured dome hovered the Seraphim... white-skinned, infantile in form, its body swallowed by layers upon layers of vast, feathered wings.
The beams weren't fired at Henry, Cagaro, Arcee or Blyke directly. They pierced the air at strange angles into empty space, into pillars, into the floor and reality obeyed.
Where the light touched, matter warped. Stone bent like wax, air folded inward.
Space compressed and snapped outward in jagged distortions. A column twisted into a spiral of geometry before collapsing into a thin vertical line.
"Don't track the beams, track the distortion!" Arcee shouted, calculating trajectories mid-leap as the floor beneath her liquefied into rippling glass.
Blyke grabbed her arm, launching them both upward as a wave of warped gravity crushed the altar behind them into a floating cube of debris.
Cagaro vanished from the spot.
He popped up fifty meters above the nave, displaced by a sudden spatial rupture. The Seraphim's beam had lanced harmlessly beside him but the space between them folded like a closing jaw.
It was targeting where he would exist.
"Cagaro!" Blyke braced to jump...
Henry stepped forward into nothingness and reached into his spatial pocket. His Astra emerged rough edged.
The beam flared again, carving a line across the void between the Seraphim and Cagaro. It was marching ahead at Cagaro swiftly.
Henry swung it with full force of his wrist splitting space-sound force.
A single dimensional cut.
He sliced the space between the beam and Cagaro so that the beam couldn't reach him.
The distorted segment of reality separated cleanly, a thin sheet of warped existence severed and collapsing into a harmless shimmer. The beam continued but its path no longer was connected.
Cagaro dropped as gravity reasserted itself.
Blyke launched upward, catching him mid-fall, boots skidding across an invisible platform Arcee had predicted seconds earlier.
Above them, the Seraphim's wings shifted. Hundreds of feathers turned, each reflecting a different angle of space.
Henry lowered his Astra slightly, eyes fixed upward.
The Seraphim did not aim again.
Every beam it released was calculated through distorted layers of space, its perception threaded through higher dimensions like invisible roots.
The floating cathedral trembled as warped light carved spirals into pillars and twisted open corridors that hadn't existed seconds before.
Arcee landed beside Henry, eyes tracking the wings.
"It's not reacting to us." she muttered. "It's reacting to the distortions it creates. It sees through them."
Above, the Seraphim's feathers rotated, subtle shifts, like clockwork. Each rotation preceded a spatial fold.
Cagaro noticed first.
When the beams tore through empty air, there were micro-gaps—infinitesimal instants where space recalibrated before fully bending.
He stepped into one.
Reality snapped around him, but he slipped through the distortion wave instead of away from it. The warped geometry carried him forward like a current.
"I can ride it!" he shouted.
Another beam split the cathedral's ceiling, space folding inward. Cagaro moved with the collapse, surfing the gravitational shear, closing distance instead of retreating.
"Feather rotation predicts distortion angle." Arcee said rapidly. "Three clockwise turns, thirty-degree spatial fold. Counterclockwise—it is a vertical compression!"
Blyke adjusted mid-air, no longer blindly dodging. He waited for the twist then launched along its curve, using the warped trajectory like a slingshot.
The battlefield shifted from chaos to pattern.
Henry watched the beams intersect.
"They need feedback." he realized. "It's mapping space through reflection. The distortions bounce off each other."
A beam lanced across the nave. Another followed, intersecting at a warped seam. The geometry pulsed brighter where they overlapped.
"It's using collision points to refine its sight."
Arcee's eyes widened. "So scramble the reflections."
Cagaro dove through another micro-opening, this time striking at the air itself. His blade didn't cut flesh... it cut alignment. He targeted the shimmering field around the Seraphim's wings, disrupting the lattice where distortions converged.
The Seraphim reacted for the first time.
Its feathers flared violently, beams firing faster. Space fractured into overlapping prisms.
Henry stepped forward, Astra humming in his grip.
"Blyke, do force convergence. Arcee, call the timing."
Blyke propelled debris into the air, forcing the beams to ricochet off warped surfaces. Arcee counted rotations like a conductor.
"Now! Thirty milliseconds!"
Two beams collided inside a twisted corridor of compressed space.
Henry sliced the warped geometry at the exact intersection point. The impact inverted.
Light folded inward instead of outward. A feedback loop ignited, distortions reflecting into themselves, spatial equations compounding uncontrollably.
The Seraphim's wings convulsed. Its perception field flickered, higher-dimensional sight scrambling as reflections multiplied beyond calculation.
Cagaro struck again, severing another strand of the shimmering lattice. The connection to its elevated vantage wavered like a signal breaking through static.
More beams fired but they no longer flowed cleanly. They overlapped chaotically, feeding into the growing loop Henry maintained with precise strategy.
Each slash redirected geometry. Each collision compounded instability.
Arcee shielded her eyes. "It's not losing but... it's overheating! Its system can't process this much recursive distortion!"
Feathers began shedding fragments of warped light. The beams faltered, collapsing mid-formation.
Henry drove Astra downward one final time, sealing the feedback loop into itself.
The floating cathedral stabilized, cracks froze the mid-fracture.
Above them, the Seraphim hovered, wings trembling, perception field scrambled, higher-dimensional vision severed from the distortion network it relied on.
It hadn't been destroyed. It had been forced to stop. At the time, it had faced them without warped space between them.
Toe to toe.
The Seraphim hovered in unstable silence, wings twitching as its scrambled perception struggled to recalibrate.
Henry didn't look away from it.
"Blyke," he said calmly, holding Astra out. "Use it."
Blyke stared at the blade like it was alive. "No."
Arcee snapped her head toward him. "This isn't grief time. Take it."
"I said no."
Henry finally glanced at him. "You rode distortion waves 0.1 minute ago. You forced beam convergence. You are the toughest guy we have."
"That's exactly why I shouldn't touch it." Blyke shot back. "That thing distorts space itself. If I mistime it, I don't just miss... I could erase something."
Arcee stepped closer. "We don't have the luxury of fear."
"It's not fear!" Blyke's voice rose. "It's out of your comprehension. You two think in equations and dimensions. That thing doesn't forgive any instinct."
Henry tilted his head slightly. "Then think."
Blyke clenched his fists. Inside, the conflict churned. He was the one who leapt first, who trusted momentum. If he hesitated, someone could die. If he didn't hesitate, something worse could happen.
Arcee grabbed the hilt and tried to press it into his hand. "Adapt yourself."
He stepped back. "No."
The Seraphim's feathers began rotating again. Henry sighed. "Unbelievable."
Blyke shot him a glare. "You think this is simple?"
"I think," Henry replied flatly, "that you're overcomplicating it."
"Oh really?"
"Yes. Because instead of analyzing the battlefield, you're analyzing yourself."
Blyke went silent for a moment.
Henry's eyes sharpened. "You rode distortions by feel. You forced beam collisions without formulas. And now you are scared of a pigeon?"
"I'm not scared of a— where the f*ck it looks like a pigeon!?"
Henry stepped closer, lowering his voice.
"Then stop acting like a dumbass, although you are one."
The word hit harder to Blyke than the beams had.
Henry continued, almost coldly calm. "I didn't ask you to become me. I told you to do what you think about the situation."
Blyke looked back at the Seraphim. Its distortions were unstable now.