The first thing Ethan felt when the TARDIS doors opened was pull.
Not just a call — an anchor, dragging his soul forward. The White Lantern Ring hummed with urgency, and somewhere in the background, the Carnitrix muttered warnings like a heart monitor before flatline.
Jason scanned the horizon. "We're not in Kansas. Or anywhere on the same map, for that matter."
Sherlock's coat billowed as he stepped out behind them. "That's because you're not walking into a place. You're walking into a conflict — one older than every map put together."
The landscape stretched out like an autopsy table — cracked, hollow ground, littered with white fire craters. Above, a sky of dead ash light.
Two armies faced each other in the distance:
On the left, alabaster-armored warriors marked with the sigil of SCP-343.
On the right, an ocean of twisted flesh and tentacles, Shub-Niggurath's spawn.
Ethan's jaw tightened. "They're waiting for something to start it."
The Ring's light surged from his chest like a beacon. Every head — human, alien, or abomination — turned toward him.
---
The Opening Surge
The first wave hit without warning.
Shub-spawn rushed forward in a jagged tide — wolf-sized horrors with chitin that pulsed like breathing lungs.
Ethan didn't just swap into a single form.
"Fusion Mode: Diamond-Arms!"
Four-Arms' bulk merged with Diamondhead's crystalline armor, each strike backed by superstrength and blades growing from his elbows. White Lantern light wrapped the edges of every punch, turning them into explosive bursts of life energy.
The first spawn shattered on impact. The second imploded into ash. The third… grew a new head, twice the size.
Jason's blade flashed beside him. "Careful — these things adapt."
---
The Shepherd Arrives
A shadow fell over the battlefield. The spawn parted for something bigger — The Shepherd of the Thousand Young, a ten-meter titan stitched from nightmare geometry. Its limbs bent in diamond angles, each joint crowned with black bone hooks.
"Fusion Mode: Naljian-Accel!"
Ethan's body shimmered, growing thinner, sleeker — XLR8's speed layered over Naljian dimensional phasing. He zipped forward, weaving through attacks that cut across multiple timelines.
Force Push amplified by Lantern light hurled the Shepherd off-balance. Ethan phased through its hook-arm, emerging mid-spin to drive a Shiva-bloodline-charged kick into its knee. The blow didn't just break bone — it unwrote the joint's history of ever existing.
Sherlock's voice carried over comms: "Binding spell ready — stall it!"
Jason slammed his sword into the Shepherd's leg stump. Golden SCP blasts from the 343 army followed, detonating in sync with Sherlock's incantation. The Shepherd screamed in seven layers of reality at once before collapsing into mist.
---
Fracture Within the White Army
The tide should've shifted — but Ethan's Force sense tingled like static before lightning.
One SCP-343 soldier broke rank, "accidentally" missing a spawn and instead redirecting its charge toward Ethan. Another subtle misfire — another spawn spared.
Ethan blurred forward in Fusion Mode: XLR8-Chromastone, speed combined with perfect energy absorption. He intercepted the soldier, absorbed the man's blast, and flung it back — vaporizing his helmet.
The eyes beneath weren't human. They were spirals. Nyarlathotep's mark.
The traitor smiled. "The White Ring is a leash. You just don't feel the pull yet."
He detonated in a cloud of memetic static, trying to overwrite Ethan's identity. Naljian phasing combined with Diamondhead plating blocked the worst of it — but the static lingered, whispering.
Jason muttered, "This is gonna get ugly."
---
The Rift in the Sky
The battlefield trembled. A seam tore open above them, bleeding white light — the surgical, controlled radiance of SCP-343's will.
An old man descended, kind-eyed, every step measured. The avatar of SCP-343.
"Bearer," 343 said, voice like warm honey, "stand with me, and this intrusion ends forever. Refuse, and your light will fade before its time."
Before Ethan could answer, the ground exploded in black roots, each tipped with a snapping mouth. From the rupture rose something vast — Shub-Niggurath's Ascendant Aspect.
The battlefield froze. Even the spawn bowed.
---
God vs. God
Ethan didn't hesitate. "I fight on my own terms."
343's smile never faltered, but the air grew cold.
"Fusion Mode: Naljian-Diamond-Lantern-Shiva!"
It wasn't just a form. It was a state. His body became crystalline yet fluid, folded-space wings stretching wide, White Lantern energy burning in every facet, Shiva's destructive rebirth coursing in his strikes.
The Aspect swung a limb the size of a building — Ethan caught it, Lantern light flooding into the corrupted flesh until flowers bloomed from its surface. The Aspect roared, recoiling as its own limb betrayed it.
Jason darted through the chaos, hacking down tendrils that reached for Ethan. Sherlock's runes locked roots into the earth, forcing the Aspect to focus on brute strength over infiltration.
343's soldiers unleashed concentrated barrages — though Ethan noticed some hesitating. More cracks in the White army's loyalty.
---
The Fusion Push
Ethan shifted again — this time merging Four-Arms + Chromastone + Naljian. He absorbed the Aspect's abyssal energy, doubled it with Lantern amplification, then slammed all four fists into its chest. The impact didn't just wound it — it tore a hole through dimensions, dragging part of its essence into a dying timeline.
Shiva's bloodline flared, and Ethan rewrote the wound's reality:
> This flesh has never belonged to the Goat.
The Aspect screamed, form unraveling into vaporous streams.
343's avatar stepped forward, extending a hand. "Let me finish it."
Ethan ignored him — instead, shifting to Fusion Mode: Naljian-Lantern-XLR8 to deliver a final strike across every overlapping plane of the battlefield. The Aspect convulsed, folding in on itself until nothing remained but silence.
---
The Knife in the Ribs
Pain exploded in Ethan's side. He staggered, looking down to see one of 343's lieutenants withdrawing a blade made of crystallized divinity.
"For the balance," the lieutenant whispered. "Life unchecked is as dangerous as death."
Jason decapitated the lieutenant before he could strike again, but the blow had already drained a third of the Ring's charge.
343's eyes hardened. "You're not ready for what's coming."
With a flare of sterile light, he and his army vanished.
---
The Quiet After
Jason exhaled. "We just fought an Elder God, survived betrayal, and pissed off SCP-343. That's… something."
Sherlock shut his notebook. "The Endless Council will notice. And the Naljian fusion state is destabilizing — you're leaking dimensional residue."
Ethan looked down at his glowing hands. The White Lantern pulse was slower now, heavier. "Let them notice. The war's already here."
Far above, unseen, something with a thousand ever-shifting eyes smiled.
---
Next: Chapter 10 — "The Ringbearer's Trial"
The Endless force Ethan to prove he can control his fusions without destabilizing reality — or risk losing the Carnitrix entirely.