One minute earlier,

  Chrome’s metallic body finished reforming in silence. Plates slid into place with muted precision, seams locking as his frame rose to its full height. The sound was minimal and controlled, yet it carried an undeniable weight, as though the air itself acknowledged his presence.

  Rose watched closely, her eyes narrowing, anticipation sharpening her focus. She waited for the surge she expected, for the awakening of the cores, for the power of her children to be drawn upon.

  It didn’t come.

  An unnatural stillness settled over the chamber, stretching far longer than it should have. Then Chrome spoke.

  “Give me twenty seconds.”

  His voice was cold and metallic, perfectly even. It cut through the silence like a honed blade.

  Rose blinked. Twenty seconds?

  Confusion crept in as her eyes widened slightly. He hadn’t activated the cores. He hadn’t drawn on their power at all.

  'Is he… respecting them?'

  The thought lingered only briefly before she turned sharply and ran. She sprinted toward the control room, nodding once as she left Chrome behind. Her abilities guided her path, subtly bending distance and space so the journey took no more than ten seconds.

  She burst into the control room, where panic reigned. Staff members shouted into comms, voices overlapping as they struggled to manage the catastrophic spread of rifts erupting across the planet. Displays flickered with warnings, projections stuttering beneath the sheer volume of incoming data.

  Rose ignored it all. She moved straight to her desk, scanning rapidly until she found what she needed, a blue button. She pressed it without hesitation.

  A massive screen unfolded across the monitoring room, activating satellite feeds, real-time tracking, and combat analysis, all centered squarely on Chrome and his projected trajectory. Rose allowed herself a small grin. With him on their side, they had already won.

  The smile barely lasted a second before an alarm shrieked. Rose snapped her attention to the holographic Earth, eyes widening as another rift tore itself open just outside the academy, barely a kilometer away. A sixth-rank signature, a Blight. She clenched her teeth.

  Then Chrome’s voice echoed suddenly through the speakers. “Will it truly be alright if I leave?”

  Rose looked up, and smiled. “Yes,” she said calmly, pride warming her tone. “We have our own guardian.”

  The satellite feed shifted. A humanoid figure emerged from the rift, wearing a long, flowing robe that fluttered violently against the wind. Its skin was a dull grey, its hair a muted brunette, tugged hard by the air around it. For a brief moment, the being looked almost peaceful. Then it turned.

  Its gaze locked onto the headquarters of the Rosemary Organization. The Blight tilted its head slightly, studying the structure below, before slowly raising its hand.

  Countless black, unholy lights erupted forth, screaming through the sky as they converged on the academy. Their impact seemed inevitable,

  until space itself resisted.

  Each beam struck the air and shattered like glass. The attacks fractured inward, collapsing into nothingness as though swallowed by a broken mirror.

  The Blight froze.

  Its eyes widened in genuine surprise.

  Then the sky tore open.

  Before the academy, space rippled violently and split apart, revealing a man stepping through the fracture as though it were a doorway. Long black hair flowed freely behind him, his pale skin stark against minimal leather armor crafted from the remains of a monstrous Blight, its surface etched with scars and the weight of darker history.

  The two locked eyes, if only for a moment.

  “I see,” Tharion said calmly.

  He raised his hand.

  The sky around the Blight fractured again, darkening as the same unholy energy it had unleashed moments before bled back into existence.

  “I’ll end your suffering quickly, then.”

  The air shattered.

  The Blight’s own attacks, the ones it had launched earlier, collapsed back into reality, slamming into it from every direction at once. The impact shook the horizon, sending dust and debris erupting outward in a violent surge.

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  Then, silence fell.

  Tharion looked down at the settling cloud and smiled faintly. His fourth trial had changed him, not gifted, but learned. He had acquired the ability to shatter space like a mirror, to store everything within it inside his own plane, and to return it instantly wherever he desired. Now, that space enveloped the Blight completely.

  Against Tharion, a ranged fighter faced not a battle but a death sentence.

  But the blight wasnt dead yet.

  The dust exploded outward.

  The Blight roared as it emerged, unscathed and with its robe untouched. Tharion’s smile widened. “Good,” he said softly. His body fractured like glass. “Then I won’t be bored.”

  At that same moment, a brilliant light erupted from the academy. Something tore into the sky at impossible speed, moving so fast it was barely trackable even to Paragon-level perception.

  Tharion’s eyes widened.

  The Blight seized the opening and charged, its fist driving straight through Tharion’s chest. The creature howled in pain and recoiled.

  Tharion’s body was not flesh. It was a living mirror. The moment the punch landed, jagged shards erupted inward, slicing into the Blight’s arm. The creature stared at its hand in shock as fragments pulled themselves free, returning to Tharion and seamlessly sealing the wound as his chest reformed.

  Tharion smiled, he was satisfied.

  The Blight still didn’t understand.

  It fractured the sky again, preparing its next attack.

  Far above, Chrome roared into the heavens. His ascent was violent, his speed nearly beyond the academy’s tracking systems. Metallic hair streamed behind him as the world blurred beneath.

  For a brief moment, he closed his eyes. He felt the wind rush across his frame, whispering over his metal skin. The sensation stunned him. Eighteen years. Eighteen years since he had last felt it, outside air, freedom.

  Chrome opened his eyes and smiled. His metal lips curved upward as he opened his chest.

  Metallic plates folded outward with reverent precision, revealing the eight cores embedded at Chrome’s center. Each one was alive, each one housing a soul that still endured.

  Softly, almost hesitantly, he spoke. “Can you feel it, guys?” There was a pause, then warmth entered his voice. “Can you feel the wind?”

  The cores answered. Light bloomed within his chest, eight distinct colors flaring to life in joyful resonance. Crimson burned with fierce resolve. Azure shimmered like an open sky. Emerald pulsed with calm vitality. Violet flickered, sharp and inquisitive. Aqua flowed gently, like the sea below. Obsidian absorbed the light around it, steady and silent. White gleamed with serene clarity. Orange flared wildly, alive with motion.

  They celebrated, their energies spiraling and overlapping, harmonizing in the open air. For the first time in years, they were no longer confined to darkness or silence. They felt the sky. Chrome’s metal lips curved faintly upward.

  Then, carefully, protectively, he closed his chest. The plates sealed, locking the cores safely within his frame. His expression changed. Wonder gave way to worry.

  Chrome surged forward, accelerating toward the chamber, toward the students, toward Vale. Every fraction of a second mattered now. Wasted time meant blood would be spilled.

  His thoughts raced as fast as his body. The New Order. It had to be them. They had done this for centuries, kidnapping, killing, harvesting Visora organs to fuel their weapons. chrome was one of those weapons.

  The realization carried weight, as it always did. Chrome had not chosen this existence. He had not chosen to be the vessel that stole eight lives, or to be the instrument that had ended countless more. He clenched his jaw. Not again. He would not allow more deaths by his hands, not today.

  There was no time to dwell. The New Order had found a way to forcibly open rifts. Chrome had theories, dangerous ones, but what mattered was this, they could not control what emerged. Rogue rifts meant uncontrolled spawn. Catastrophe.

  Chrome reached the target zone in less than a second. He hovered high above the ocean, suspended over the teleportation chamber as space pressed tightly around his frame. For a brief moment, the world below felt distant and small.

  He inhaled. A deep blue radiance spread across his metallic body, energy cascading along his frame as his eyes opened, narrowing with lethal focus.

  Then he fell.

  The air split apart as Chrome accelerated downward at a velocity only Archons could endure. The barrier shielding the teleportation chamber loomed beneath him, floating atop the ocean’s surface like a defiant scar.

  He struck. The sea below tore open.

  Water screamed upward as Chrome slammed into the barrier, shockwaves rippling outward for kilometers while the ocean parted violently around the chamber, towering walls of water rearing skyward. Yet the barrier held.

  Chrome strained against it, power surging through his metallic body, but it wasn’t enough. No cracks formed. For a fleeting moment, he stalled.

  Somewhere across the planet, someone chuckled. Tharion stood amid the remains of the Blight he had erased in under a minute, its shattered body strewn lifelessly at his feet. Something tugged at his perception, and he turned his head. Far beyond oceans and continents, he felt Chrome struggling.

  Tharion raised a hand. “You could really use some help with that,” he muttered.

  Reality fractured as a bow formed in his grasp, its limbs shaped from warped space itself. As he drew the string, an invisible arrow coalesced along the distortion, tension screaming through the air. His eyes sharpened. He saw Chrome, felt the surge of his effort as the ocean beside the chamber erupted violently under the strain.

  Tharion smiled and released the arrow. It traveled only a dozen meters before space shattered behind it. Reality fractured again and again, folding the arrow forward in rapid succession, accelerating it beyond any conventional limit. In an instant, it crossed the planet and struck the barrier.

  For one breath, nothing happened. Then the barrier gave. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface as Chrome surged forward, and with a final push, the construct collapsed inward. He tore through it completely, crashing into the chamber below like a meteor.

  The mysterious man had been mid-attack. Chrome struck him head-on. The floor detonated beneath them, dust and debris erupting outward, the shockwave flattening everything nearby. Chrome landed in a crouch, metal grinding against reinforced plating as the chamber screamed under the force of his arrival.

  Without hesitation, he extended his hand. “Recall,” he commanded.

  Across the battlefield, a small device embedded in Vale’s metallic arm tore free with a sharp whine. The drone streaked through the air and rejoined Chrome, slotting seamlessly back into his frame.

  Chrome turned and looked at Vale, not as a weapon, but as a guardian. His expression softened, metal eyes dimming slightly. Vale stared back at him, disbelief and relief colliding in his chest. His lips moved before his mind could catch up. “…Chrome?”