I ignored the notification.
Whatever the system wanted to say could wait. This moment could not.
The void slowly settled as the shockwave faded, debris still drifting in long arcs around me. Chunks of shattered platforms rotated lazily, their broken laws bleeding faint light before going dark. The second layer below was scarred too, its once-ordered structure fractured into a ruin of floating wreckage.
And right in front of me—
Upita.
Half of his body was gone.
Not wounded. Not damaged.
Gone.
From the center of his chest upward, the right side of his form had been pulverized. His shoulder was missing. Half his neck. Half his face. Where his head should have been whole, there was only erasure.
