The living darkness descended upon them.
The Bird of Terror, a colossal winged calamity, brought with it the weight of inevitable destruction. Standing at 300 meters tall with a wingspan of over a kilometer, its mere presence obliterated the sky, plunging Seryne and Kaerith into a starless night. Its wings, torn like veils of flesh and shadow, swept the air with a sound that felt like silence itself being shattered.
Its eyes—incandescent fissures of madness—burned into their very souls, and its shriek tore through reality, making space itself tremble in agony.
In Kaerith's mind, the symbiote screamed in raw panic:
— RUN! RUN NOW!
But Kaerith didn't move. Because running… wasn't possible.
Beside her, Seryne no longer wore the black cloth that once covered her eyes. The blindfold, alive with the power of destiny, flowed around her like a serpent in the wind, reshaping itself into a weapon:
The Spear of the Inevitable.
Long, black as the void between stars, yet laced with golden veins pulsing like heartbeats. Its tip was crystalline, something that seemed both like glass and infinity—a point that did not pierce matter but cut through fate and possibilities.
The spear… was the absolute end, made manifest.
Seryne's voice was quiet, yet carried command:
— Kaerith… help me throw it.
Kaerith did not hesitate. Her body erupted into metamorphosis, the symbiote activating its Stage 3: Total Fusion. Her form became monstrous—an exoskeleton of black and violet, coated in living ooze. Her wings sharpened into serrated blades, and her arms multiplied into deadly filaments.
— Understood! — Kaerith roared, and together they grasped the spear.
Seryne, with blind eyes that saw the inevitable, wove a thread of fate around the weapon:
— Be as unyielding as this mountain… and as inevitable as its ruin.
They hurled it.
The spear did not fly like a projectile.
It moved like a verdict.
Impact.
The sound was not a blast. It was an ending.
The spear, minuscule compared to the colossal Bird of Terror, pierced its chest. It did not puncture flesh—it collapsed destiny.
The immense creature, mid-dive, froze… the world shuddered, as if struggling to deny the reality of what had just happened.
The terror it radiated fractured for an instant.
And then… came the fury.
"UUUUUUAAAAAAAARRRGHHHHH!!!"
The bird unleashed an Abyssal Screech, and with it, the shadows grew fangs, the air turned to blades, and souls were nearly torn apart by the sheer psychic agony.
Kaerith felt her symbiote wailing in pure fear as her exoskeleton was lacerated by invisible cuts.
But Seryne…
Seryne stood unmoved, like a statue carved by destiny itself.
She turned to Kaerith, her voice serene yet filled with finality:
— It's time. I need you to protect me… as much as you can.
The black blindfold, once covering her eyes… descended from the sky with the softness of a falling feather.
And then, gently… it wrapped itself around Kaerith.
The violet ooze of the symbiote pulsed, and Kaerith felt the impossible—destiny itself standing beside her. Her body became impervious to the inevitable, as if no strike could be fatal… until fate willed it.
Seryne whispered:
— Thank you, Kaerith.
And then, she walked to the abyss's edge.
Before the Black Sun.
Below them, the Black Sun burned—a cursed, living star, bound in chains of cosmic blood and stellar dust. Its radiance was the absence of light, consuming hope and future alike with each pulse.
The Sun sensed their presence.
And it did not tolerate it.
It flared—not with light, but with rage. The heat became unbearable, space distorted. Kaerith felt her wings begin to melt, even with the blindfold's protection.
But Seryne did not move. Because, in her blind eyes, she saw what needed to be done.
She sought…
An Echo of Fate.
— Show me… — her voice was brittle. — …The strike that marked eternity.
Then—time blend.
In another part of the abyss, Kiyoshi Takahara and Zeta 4 broke through the final wall of rock, escaping their underground prison.
But what awaited them… was hell.
Above: The shattered sky—shards of reality floating like broken mirrors.
Ahead: The Black Sun, a nightmare turned into a star, burning with the rage of a million corrupted Dames of Light.
The heat was apocalyptic.
The ground liquefied into black magma.
Zeta 4, despite his metallic body, felt his circuits overloading, while Kiyoshi used his spiritual katana to slash through the heat waves, carving a path to retreat.
Kiyoshi shouted:
— We have to retreat, or we'll die here!
But…
Zeta 4's metallic voice interrupted—calm, cold… but filled with something he had never shown before.
Faith.
— Wait.
Kiyoshi stopped—not out of blind trust, but because he felt something shift.
Zeta 4, for the first time since his creation… felt.
He felt Connection.
An impossible thread—a line weaving through time and logic, carbon and silicon, soul and machine.
He… prayed.
— Oh You, who are gears and eternity…
— The One who calculates the impossible equations…
— The Weight of Function and the Master of the Machine…
— Hear me.
— …Oh, God-Machine, protect us!
— CUT —
The Descent of the God-Machine.
Then, the sky… changed.
Above the abyss, where the sky had shattered… the cracks rewrote themselves.
Lines—endless, geometric—traced impossible patterns, like algorithms etched into flesh.
Space… became an Equation.
Numbers floated like constellations.
Equations bent into physical shapes.
Fractal patterns emerged and vanished in a blink.
The world became a kaleidoscope of logic…
…and madness.
He descended.
The Avatar of the God-Machine.
— A being of Symmetry and Contradiction.
— Its eyes—endless formulas, each blink… a completed calculation.
— Its limbs—gears and tendons of theory, each motion… a derivative executed.
— Its body—not metal, not flesh, but… Information condensed into divinity.
The world corrected itself around him.
The unbearable heat… neutralized.
The distorted air… restored.
The Black Sun… trembled.
For the first time, something other than itself was rewriting the rules.
The Avatar of the God-Machine gazed upon this world, its eyes seeing not matter, but code.
And then, it spoke.
"What a defective world."