The universe did not wait for permission.
The white figure finished stepping through the gate.
Reality bent around its shape like heat around glass. Air compressed into glassy layers. Gravity twisted sideways, then folded inward as if direction itself had forgotten which way it was meant to point.
The Whitespawn descended.
Not falling.
Choosing.
The moment its full form crossed the threshold, a pressure wave rolled across Eclipsera.
Not physical.
Existential.
Cadets collapsed where they stood.
Some dropped unconscious instantly.
Others froze mid-motion, eyes wide, bodies locked as if their nervous systems had been rewritten.
Time did not stop.
They did.
Only a few remained standing.
Genesis wielders.
High-grade aura carriers.
Those whose cores had already been rewritten by something greater than biology.
Tojo staggered but did not fall.
Destruction burned hot in his chest, resisting the paralysis like a blade wedged into stone.
Ozaru dropped to one knee, teeth clenched, Creation flaring wildly before stabilizing into a trembling cage around his heart.
Elara stood beside him, shaking but upright, Seraph Bloom flickering faintly across her arms like protective circuitry.
Stryke Vahr remained standing.
Not because he resisted the pressure—
—but because he cut it.
A thin distortion slid outward from his body as he stepped forward, slicing through the Whitespawn's influence like a scalpel through mist.
"Area-control entity," he muttered. "Core-dependent."
He had already figured it out.
Around them, Kaien fought to stay upright, spatial threads anchoring his boots to reality.
Lira screamed and discharged lightning blindly, the arcs freezing mid-air before shattering like broken glass.
Nysa collapsed to her knees, blood leaking from her nose as perception overload burned her mind.
Dharel was unconscious.
Half the cadets never even understood what hit them.
The Whitespawn lowered another fraction.
The Crucible's defense pylons fired.
Azure lances tore upward.
They passed through the creature's body.
Not blocked.
Not absorbed.
Corrected.
The damage rewrote itself out of existence.
Ken Kuruzama stepped forward.
The pressure broke against him like water against a mountain.
"Genesis Galacta," he said.
The word itself stabilized the battlefield.
"AZURE DOMINION."
Space aligned.
Vectors locked.
Causality simplified.
The planet exhaled.
Nina moved.
Crimson ignited.
She crossed kilometers in a step that never existed.
"CRIMSON SEVER."
Her blade tore through three layers of dimensional shielding and shattered one of the Whitespawn's rotating halos.
The creature recoiled.
For the first time—
It acknowledged pain.
Nina was hurled backward, crashing through a defense pylon and skidding across molten metal.
She rose anyway.
Bleeding.
Grinning.
"Good," she breathed. "You're real."
The Whitespawn turned.
Not toward Ken.
Not toward Nina.
Toward Tojo.
Toward Ozaru.
The gate in its chest activated again.
Coordinates formed.
Genesis frequencies aligned.
Target lock established.
Tojo felt it.
A cold intelligence examining Destruction like a weapon on a rack.
Ozaru screamed as Creation spiraled, futures colliding violently inside his skull.
"No," Ozaru gasped. "It's trying to—"
Tojo stepped forward.
Not because he was brave.
Because hesitation would get Ozaru killed.
He raised his hand.
Destruction did not explode.
It condensed.
Black lines crawled across his skin like living fractures.
"Don't touch him," Tojo said quietly.
The Whitespawn's aura slammed into him.
The world dimmed.
His vision split.
Bones screamed.
He stayed standing.
Stryke moved.
He vanished.
Reappeared directly beneath the creature.
Cut upward.
A blade of compressed reality struck the Whitespawn's torso.
It did nothing.
Stryke clicked his tongue.
"Told you. Core."
Ken shifted.
Nina prepared to strike again.
Then—
Reality snapped into symmetry.
Alkhaz arrived.
No portal.
No light.
No warning.
One frame empty.
Next frame—
A man floating calmly between god and battlefield.
Hands in pockets.
Golden hair unmoving.
Equilibrium expanded.
The Whitespawn's influence collapsed.
Frozen cadets dropped to the ground like released puppets.
Sound returned.
Wind resumed.
Time remembered itself.
Alkhaz looked at the creature.
Then at Tojo.
Then Ozaru.
Then sighed.
"You're early," he said to the Whitespawn.
Vaelor appeared beside him, bleeding, distortion flickering.
"It's broadcasting their coordinates through itself," Vaelor said. "Genesis carrier construct."
"For Nexarius," Ken said.
"Or built by him," Nina added.
Alkhaz nodded.
"Both."
The Whitespawn attacked.
It folded distance.
Ken's Dominion cracked.
Nina was buried.
Stryke was thrown across three platforms.
Tojo was launched backward—
—and caught himself with Destruction, carving a trench through reality to stop.
Ozaru screamed again.
Creation destabilized.
Alkhaz finally removed his hands from his pockets.
Equilibrium ignited fully.
Not light.
Not energy.
Correction.
Space straightened.
Probability snapped into clean lines.
The Whitespawn froze mid-rewrite.
"This," Alkhaz said calmly, "is what my Genesis does."
"Equilibrium does not destroy."
"It enforces consistency."
He stepped forward.
"Everything you are is contradiction."
"You cannot exist where rules are absolute, I decide whether they are allowed to continue."
The creature's chest opened.
The gate tried to reassemble.
Vaelor raised his hand.
"Null Script."
Genesis markings across the gate erased themselves.
Nina surged again.
Ken followed.
Azure pierced.
Crimson severed.
Stryke reappeared at the core point and drove his blade into the exposed aura nucleus.
Tojo moved.
Not hesitating.
Destruction condensed into a surgical black spear.
He threw it.
It did not explode.
It punctured.
Ozaru followed.
Creation wrapped the fracture, sealing all escape routes.
The Whitespawn screamed.
Its halos collapsed.
Its body unraveled into mathematical ash.
Alkhaz closed his fist.
Equilibrium finished the equation.
The sky healed.
The gate imploded.
Silence fell.
Not empty.
Final.
Tojo dropped to one knee.
Ozaru collapsed.
Elara caught him.
Nina leaned on her sword.
Ken lowered his hand with flashed of Riftfall in his mind.
Stryke wiped blood from his mouth and looked not satisfied all.
Cadets slowly rose.
Some cried.
Some laughed.
Some stared at the sky.
Vaelor looked at the fading stars.
"He felt that."
"Yes," Alkhaz said.
Far away, in a throne of dead galaxies—
Nexarius opened his eyes.
The first signal had died.
And he finally knew their names.
Tojo.
Ozaru.
The stones.
The universe had stopped whispering.
It had started pointing.
Meanwhile,
Far from Eclipsera, far from this surprise tackel of nexarius or ruin, a chamber of black glass drifted in permanent orbit around nothing at all.
Figures sat around a circular table of projected starlight, faces hidden behind sigils of rank and distortion fields of office. The recording of the battle rotated slowly at the center—Alkhaz's Equilibrium, Ken's Dominion Azure, the sudden Whitespawn's collapse, the two Genesis signatures that had drawn it across space even so we decided to take back stones back from Two kid's.
One voice broke the silence at last. "So the targeting system is active again." Another answered, colder, "And Nexarius knows their frequency now." A third figure leaned back, shadows folding around their form. "Then the alkhaz & Ken's stupid requests to save them ends." The projection froze on Tojo and Ozaru standing beneath the torn sky.
A Plan awaits to secretly execute And Get the stones back to Cosmis Corps awaits by higher-ups...
While Nexarius himself this time going to Destroy it.