The combat group jumped thirteen minutes ahead of schedule.
Luzian stood on the bridge of the Hammer, Praxis's flagship. Chrome walls. No windows. Just screens showing the void bleeding into color as reality tore open.
Thirteen minutes. Because I told them to wait. Because I needed to think. And then I realized thinking was just another way of stalling.
The jump spat them out into fire.
Sector Seven wasn't burning. It was on fire. Every screen showed the same thing, planets cracked open, star systems collapsing, a war that had stopped being about territory two hundred years ago and become about survival.
"Status."
"Fleet-Mind: 'Dimensional instability is worse than projected. The barriers are degrading at three times the estimated rate. We have approximately forty hours before collapse.'"
Forty hours. Not seventy-two. Forty.
Luzian's hands found the railing. The suit tightened around his knuckles.
"Where's the source?"
Storm-Daughter appeared beside him. Her wings were folded tight, but light bled through the edges, casting her face in sharp angles.
"Eighteen light-minutes coreward. There's a structure. Artificial. Big. Something's happening there."
"What kind of structure?"
"The kind that's tearing reality apart."
A flash on the screens. Explosions. Ships, dozens of them, breaking apart in a sphere of distorted light.
Praxis's voice cut through the bridge. "Those are ours. The forward scout group. They were detected."
"By who?"
"Unknown. But they're dead. All of them."
Luzian's stomach clenched. (Six ships. Sixty beings. Gone in a blink. Because I sent them ahead.)
"Get me eyes on that structure. Now."
The screens flickered, shifted. Through the static and the fire, something resolved.
A city. Massive. Spherical. Covered in spines that pulsed with light. It moved through the burning system like a predator, and behind it, reality bled. Cracks in space, leaking something that looked like color but wasn't.
"What the hell is that?"
"Fleet-Mind: 'Unknown. It is not in any database. It does not match any known faction design. It is... new.'"
The city turned.
Not toward them. Toward something else. A fleet, blocky, utilitarian ships, the kind Luzian had seen in the data. The locals. The ones who'd been fighting for two hundred years.
The city's spines pulsed. Light gathered. And then,
Nothing.
No explosion. No beam. The local fleet simply... stopped existing. One frame they were there. The next, they were gone. Replaced by geometric wounds that bled into the void.
Luzian stared at the screen. At the thing that had just erased a hundred ships without effort.
That's not a weapon. That's a god.
"Praxis. Get us closer."
The chrome mask appeared on his peripheral screen.
"That thing just annihilated a fleet in three seconds. And you want to get closer."
"I want to know what it is. I want to know if it's what's tearing reality apart. And I want to know if we can stop it."
"And if we can't?"
Luzian watched the city move. Watched it pulse. Watched the cracks in reality spread behind it like a trail of blood.
"Then we run. But not until we know."
He turned to the bridge. To the beings watching him.
"Take us in. Silent approach. Minimum emissions. I want to see what we're dealing with before it sees us."
The Hammer moved forward. Into the fire. Toward the thing that killed worlds.
Luzian's reflection stared back at him from the dark screen.
You wanted to stop running. This is what stopping looks like.