The battlefield was silent.
Silent in the way only the aftermath of cosmic slaughter could be — where the screams had been burned away, where the air was still heavy with the memory of sound.
Shub-Niggurath's spawn lay in heaps of steaming ichor, their alien anatomy warping into black sludge as reality rejected their presence. Ethan stood at the center, still in Infinity Breaker form, his fractal armor shifting slowly back into his default human shape. The Carnitrix's voice in his mind was calm, clinical:
> Host energy reserves at 32%. Recommend rest cycle or replenishment protocol.
He ignored it. His gaze was locked on the Endless traitor — Kareth, the supposed Keeper of Silent Stars — who now lay in the dust, bound in voidsteel chains forged by the combined will of Jason Wayne and Luke Skywalker. The man's face was unreadable, even as his betrayal bled into the psychic ether.
Jason stepped forward, his presence swallowing the broken horizon like a tidal wave. The half-Presence's aura crackled with restrained fury.
"Why, Kareth?" Jason's voice was low, but each word was a hammer blow against the traitor's mind. "You knew the cost of letting the Outer Gods breach our reality."
Kareth chuckled. It was not the laugh of a broken man — but of one who thought he had already won.
"They cannot be stopped," he said. "But I… I can survive with them. I was promised a place in the New Silence."
The name lingered in the air like poison. Even Ethan felt the psychic resonance — a shadowed pact beyond mortal or divine comprehension.
Sherlock Holmes approached from the wreckage, TARDIS light spilling over his trench coat. His Will Lantern ring glowed faintly, scanning Kareth's neural pathways. "He's not lying. But there's something else—" Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "He's been implanted with a living fragment of Nyarlathotep."
Jason's expression darkened.
"Remove it."
Sherlock's tone was clipped. "Not here. It's integrated too deep. If I try now, we risk triggering a failsafe."
Ethan felt his knuckles tighten. The Force stirred in him, whispering possibilities — he could feel the parasite pulsing in Kareth's mind, a thread he could sever if he was willing to risk burning through his own lifeforce.
Before he could act, the ground beneath them shuddered.
---
The Next Breach
The horizon cracked open — not like an explosion, but like paper tearing under too much weight. Through the rift, tendrils of void spilled into the sky, and the air went sharp and thin. The SCP containment alarms screamed in his earpiece:
> WARNING: SCP-2317 breach. Class Omega. Multiple secondary anomalies detected.
Sherlock's ring projected the data in front of them:
— SCP-2317, "The Gate and the Keeper" — a chained titan older than reality itself.
— SCP-169 movement signatures in nearby waters.
— SCP-682… uncontained.
Jason's face was grim. "This isn't random. The breach is coordinated. They're moving the board while we're still celebrating the last win."
Ethan felt the Force tighten around him. The Carnitrix pulsed. The world was pulling him forward again.
---
Form Switch: Necroforge Prime → Void Harbinger
The change was instant — his body collapsed inward, black singularities flaring in his chest, gravity distorting the space around him. In this form, every step sent ripples through the ground.
Jason gave the order: "Ethan, take point on the rift. I'll handle SCP-682. Sherlock — you're with me until you can get that fragment out of Kareth."
Ethan didn't need to be told twice. He ignited his lightsaber, its blade burning brighter under the gravity field of his form. With a thought, he leapt into the tear in reality.
---
Inside the Breach
It was wrong inside. The colors didn't match. The stars were too close, yet infinitely far.
And standing there, wrapped in shadow, was SCP-2317's Keeper — no longer chained, but armored in chitinous black, its skull-faced head turning slowly toward him.
Ethan spoke first. "You're not getting out."
The Keeper didn't answer with words. Its body shifted, splitting into a thousand shadowed copies — each radiating the psychic hunger of Nyarlathotep's influence.
The Carnitrix was already reacting.
---
Form Switch: Void Harbinger → Starflare Sentinel
Wings of molten gold unfurled from his back, flooding the breach with solar fire. The clones hissed and burned away under the light, but more emerged from the folds of space.
He moved like lightning — saber carving through the warped geometry, Force pushes scattering the enemy ranks. Then he unleashed the Supernova Flare, a blinding pulse that erased the nearest twenty manifestations in a single burst.
Still, they came.
---
Meanwhile — Outside
Jason faced SCP-682 — the indestructible reptile — but this was no normal 682. It had been "blessed" by Shub-Niggurath's corruption, sprouting root-like tendrils and eyes that saw too much. Jason fought with a precision only someone with Lucifer's cunning and Michael's might could manage, weaving creation and destruction into each strike.
Sherlock, meanwhile, had Kareth in stasis while interfacing with the TARDIS and his Omnitrix's medical subroutines, searching for a way to extract the Nyarlathotep fragment.
But in the shadows, other Endless were watching — and not all of them seemed eager to intervene.
---
Back in the Rift
Ethan was running out of space. The breach was folding on itself, becoming a labyrinth where the Keeper's avatars had the home-field advantage.
The Carnitrix suggested a solution:
> Recommendation: Form escalation to counter-entity mass. Deploy Astral Reaver.
---
Form Switch: Starflare Sentinel → Astral Reaver
Reality tilted as his crystalline armor solidified, his body half-phased into the astral plane. Now, the Keeper's avatars couldn't fully touch him — and he could phase through them, tearing apart the binding energy that held them together.
Each kill felt like shattering glass in a vacuum.
Then the real Keeper emerged — impossibly large, its head brushing the edges of the breach. It raised its claw.
Ethan raised his saber.
The two met in a collision that sent shockwaves into both universes.
---
The Traitor Moves Again
Outside, as Jason forced SCP-682 into a containment feedback loop, Sherlock felt it — Kareth's mind-spike. The traitor wasn't waiting for rescue; he was signaling.
The ground split behind Sherlock as an SCP cult emerged — hybrids of human flesh and alien growths — moving to free Kareth.
Sherlock's Omnitrix activated instantly, morphing him into a hybrid alien form optimized for rapid tactical engagement. Willpower surged through him, emerald constructs forming blades, shields, and precision drones.
But the cult wasn't the problem.
The problem was the shadow that stepped through the tear behind them — a fragment of Azathoth's Dream itself.
---
Climax — Dual Front Battle
Inside the breach, Ethan cycled to Infinity Breaker, shattering the labyrinth walls and dragging the Keeper into raw, exposed reality. Each strike was a kaleidoscope of fractured timelines — showing what would happen if he lost, if he won, if he never came here.
Outside, Jason met the fragment of Azathoth head-on, unleashing divine light so bright the cultists vaporized in its wake. Sherlock cut down SCP entities with surgical precision, even as he fought to keep Kareth restrained.
The battles blurred.
Screams of cultists.
The roar of an Outer God's spawn.
The blinding heat of collapsing dimensions.
Then — silence again.
---
Aftermath
The Keeper was gone — not destroyed, but sealed back into a deeper layer of the breach. Ethan collapsed to one knee, his armor flickering as the Carnitrix began regeneration.
Jason and Sherlock stood over the restrained Kareth, the fragment of Azathoth dissipating into harmless stardust. But the look in Jason's eyes told Ethan the truth:
This wasn't the end.
It was the opening move.
---
Next: Chapter 7 — "The Fractured Council"