“Society has collapsed, the world has become fractured!”
- Unattributed Civilian Audio, Frankfurt Emergency Archive
Frankfurt unzipped.
Abraham Francis felt it happen beneath his boots—first as vibration, then as refusal. The street didn’t crack so much as decide it was no longer obligated to remain singular. Asphalt split into branching faults, spiderwebbing outward with a sound like tearing fabric stretched too thin. Buildings leaned, corrected, then leaned again, shedding glass and concrete in uneven avalanches.
The Hole in the Earth had begun propagating.
“Shit—fuck—shit—move!” someone screamed nearby.
Abraham moved without thinking, sprinting as the sidewalk dropped a full meter behind him, swallowing a parked car nose-first. The city was loud now—not with sirens alone, but with failure: metal screaming, concrete popping, pressure venting through places never meant to hold it. Smoke rose in uneven plumes, some white-hot steam, some black with burning insulation and fuel.
He ducked into the entryway of a half-collapsed pharmacy just as a streetlight sheared cleanly at its base and toppled sideways, smashing into a bus full of people who had been trying to evacuate. The impact folded the vehicle like paper.
There were no words for the sound that followed.
Abraham pressed his forehead against the cool tile wall and forced himself to breathe.
This isn’t an incident, he realized. This is a condition.
The comm unit on his shoulder crackled to life, overlapping voices bleeding into one another.
“—structural failure cascading—”
“—we’ve lost grid sector E—”
“—containment perimeter impossible—”
“—where the hell is Command—”
A pause.
Then the voice he recognized too well. “Division-9 units, initiate full containment protocol. Civilian loss is unavoidable. Repeat: unavoidable.”
Abraham closed his eyes.
Unavoidable.
That word used to mean something tactical. Something cold, unfortunately necessary. Now it felt like an excuse spoken too late to matter.
He stepped back out into the street.
People were everywhere—running, screaming, frozen mid-decision. A woman clawed at the door of a building whose frame had twisted shut. A man lay pinned beneath debris, one leg crushed, eyes wide and glassy as the ground trembled again.
Abraham ran to him.
“Hey—hey,” he said, dropping to his knees. “Look at me. We’re gonna get you out.”
The man laughed weakly. “You’re fucking lying. Division-9 wouldn’t do a thing for us.”
Abraham didn’t correct him. He grabbed a piece of rebar, wedged it under the concrete slab, and heaved. Pain flared through his shoulder, but the slab shifted just enough.
“Move,” Abraham said. “Now.”
The man screamed as he dragged himself free, blood slicking the pavement. Abraham pulled him upright and shoved him toward a side street that still looked intact.
“Don’t stop,” he ordered. “Don’t look back.”
The man didn’t.
Abraham stood there for a second longer, chest heaving, rain mixing with sweat and ash on his face. He felt exposed—no formation, no overwatch, no command. Just a man in Division-9 gear standing in a city that had stopped pretending authority mattered.
His comm crackled again.
“Francis,” Command barked. They had given up on formalness. “Where the fuck are you?”
Abraham stared at the device.
Images flash through his mind: Mira standing in rising water, refusing numbness. The wave of empathy rolling outward, breaking the lie cleanly in half. Officers retching, weapons lowering—not because they were ordered to, but because they felt.
He unclipped the comm from his shoulder, set it gently on the ground, then he stepped away.
The cracks widened as the minutes passed.
Some opened suddenly—sinkholes swallowing intersections whole. Others crept, splitting walls and foundations inch by inch until gravity remembered it had options. Fires broke out where gas lines ruptured. Emergency vehicles became obstacles more often than help. Abraham moved through it all like a ghost.
He knew Frankfurt’s bones. Knew which alleys sloped toward higher ground, which buildings had basements reinforced decades ago, which bridges flexed instead of snapped. He guided people where he could, shouted warnings where he couldn’t.
He didn’t fight.
He ran.
And he lived.
At some point—he didn’t know when—he ducked into an electronics store that still had power. A television flickered on behind the counter, the image warped but recognizable.
ROME IN CRISIS, the chyron read.
The anchor’s voice shook.
“—reports now confirming a Fracture event in Rome, Italy. Witnesses describe a phenomenon identified as Judith—structures collapsing inward as if judged—ancient sections of the city tearing themselves down—”
The screen cut to footage: columns falling, stone shattering, crowds scattering through narrow streets older than any modern system meant to contain them.
Abraham swallowed.
It’s spreading, he thought. Not geographically—idealogically. The permission to break had been revoked everywhere at once.
The broadcast cut to static.
Outside, a helicopter thundered overhead—Division-9 markings clear against the smoke. Searchlights swept the streets.
Containment. Now including him.
Abraham ducked out the back exit and vaulted a fence into a service alley just as boots hit pavement behind him. He didn’t run straight. He doubled back, slipped through a collapsed stairwell, crawled through a gap that looked too small to matter.
He chose shadow over confrontation.
Every time.
Once, he nearly collided with a squad moving fast, weapons raised. He pressed himself flat against a wall, breath held, heart hammering. One of them glanced his way, eyes sliding over him without recognition.
Overlooked.
He waited until they passed, then moved again.
By the time night fell—ifi t could still be called night with the sky glowing sickly purple in places—Abraham was exhausted beyond thought. He found shelter in the shell of a parking structure that had sunk unevenly but not collapsed, curled behind a concrete support and let himself shake.
Division-9 would write reports about this later.
They would call it failure of containment. Unprecedented variables. Necessary losses.
Abraham would not be part of those reports.
He watched people helping each other in the street below—strangers lifting debris, sharing water, guiding the injured through gaps the city still allowed. No orders. No hierarchy. Just movement driven by something painfully simple.
Care.
He thought of Mira again. Of the wave. Of the moment authority lost its voice.
Abraham closed his eyes.
He was done reinforcing lies.
If Division-9 found him again, he would run. If he couldn’t run, he would hide. If he couldn’t hide—
He didn’t finish the thought.
Cost of Stopping:
“A Fracture is a tear between mind and matter; a moment when emotion pierces physical law. We must learn how to combat this before mankind dies,”
- A BBC News Anchor
Rommulas moved through the space that no longer remembered him.
The ground did not reject him. That would have been simpler. Instead, it behaved as if he were a suggestion rather than a presence—distance resolving late beneath his feet, gravity deciding whether to apply itself after the fact. Each step landed half a heartbeat after he expected it to, like the world was checking its rules before allowing him forward.
Oblivion was gone.
Not suppressed. Not muted. Removed.
The absence was louder than any power he had ever carried.
He stumbled once, catching himself on a length of twisted rebar that bent slightly under his grip, then snapped back as if offended by the contact. His breathing came harder now, every movement deliberate, expensive. Without Oblivion, weight no longer flowed through him naturally. He had to earn every inch of stability.
The Hole in the Earth noticed, not hungrily, but curiously.
Wing Ridden Angel shifted behind him. At first, Rommulas thought it was simply reacting to strain—feathers tightening, the sharp white edges trembling as if resisting dissolution. But then he felt it change. Not expand. Not grow more violent. Condense.
The wings folded closer, bone and light rearranging into something denser, more skeletal. The radiant white dulled, veins of pale violet threading through it like stress fractures filled with light. Where Oblivion had once anchored space outward, Wing Ridden Angel now anchored him inward.
Rommulas straightened slowly.
Each step forward was no longer about holding the world still. It was about choosing to move anyway.
Ahead of him, the deepest region stretched like a wound that had learned how to breathe. Buildings were no longer recognizable as structures—just components. Glass hung suspended in curved sheets, reflecting fragments of light that didn’t belong to any single source. Cables coiled and uncoiled as if testing tension. Antennas pierced through floors at impossible angles, their tips humming faintly.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
And at the center of it all—
Isaac Roan.
He stood calmly amid the destruction, hands loosely at his sides, posture relaxed in a way that felt obscene given the city screaming above them. The Hole in the Earth bent subtly around him,, not prostrating itself, but accommodating his existence like a well-used thought.
Rottweiler moved without ceremony. It did not need introduction.
Purple flame rippled along its form, its body partially fused with the environment—paws emerging from walls, jaws extruding briefly from collapsed stairwells before retracting. It was everywhere Roan needed it to be without ever fully arriving.
Roan watched Rommulas approach.
“You’re struggling,” he said mildly.
Rommulas did not answer.
He took another step, the ground lagging beneath him, distance warning just enough to force a connection. His muscles screamed. Without Oblivion, every misalignment translated directly into strain. Pain was no longer abstracted away.
Roan nodded, as if confirming a hypothesis.
“That’s what happens when you insist on consequence,” he continued. “It’s inefficient. Expensive. Look at yourself, look at Frankfurt!”
He gestured casually.
The Hole in the Earth responded by opening a window of awareness upward—not visual, not literal, but felt. Rommulas sensed it: buildings cracking kilometers away, people screaming, infrastructure giving up in quiet, final ways. The city was tearing itself apart in slow motion, each failure cascading into the next.
“Acceptable loss,” Roan said. “Like Aerials. Tragic, maybe—but necessary. Systems fail when you refuse to trim what drags them down.”
Rommulas clenched his jaw.
Rottweiler struck without warning.
A section of floor detonated upward as flaming jaws snapped toward his torso. Rommulas twisted instinctively, Wing Ridden Angel flaring just enough to deflect the worst of it. Heat scorched his side, pain lancing sharp and immediate.
He staggered, barely keeping his feet.
“See?” Roan said softly. “You hesitate because you feel it. Pain. Regret. Attachment. It’s all so inefficient.”
Inside Roan, something howled.
This isn’t mercy! Noah’s voice tore through the pressure, louder now, fractured and panicked. You said removal would stop the suffering! You asshole, this—this is just killing slower!
Roan’s expression tightened for half a second.
Then smoothed.
“You’re confused,” he replied. “Because you’re still thinking like a person.”
Rottweiler lunged again, claws carving through glass and steel, the arena obligingly shortening the distance. Rommulas felt the ground tilt, funneling him into the strike like a suggestion disguised as inevitability.
He refused it.
Wing Ridden Angel snapped open, not wide but precise, the violet-veined light biting into the geometry of the Hole in the Earth itself. The ground buckled under the denial, paths misaligning just enough for Rommulas to roll aside.
The effort nearly dropped him to his knees. Without Oblivion, refusal cost him blood and breath.
Roan frowned. “That’s stubborn, not noble.”
Rommulas dragged himself upright, chest heaving. “You keep calling it mercy,” he said, voice rough. “But mercy that doesn’t allow any choice is just control pretending to be kind.”
Roan shook his head slowly. “Choice is a liability. Look where it’s gotten you and me.”
Rottweiler circled, its movements synchronized with Roan’s speech—strike, pause, reposition. Roan narrated while the dog acted, abstraction layered over brutality like a thesis written in blood.
Noah screamed again, fragmented now, his thoughts splintering under pressure. You’re—You’re wrong—You’re wrong—this isn’t saving anyone—
Roan pushed back harder.
“You’re loud because you’re afraid,” Roan snapped. “Fear is the last thing to go. That’s why it hurts!”
Rommulas felt something settle inside him then—not resolve, not peace. Clarity.
This fight could not end in restraint, nor negotiation, nor interruption.
Roan would never stop as long as he could justify subtraction as kindness. The Hole in the Earth would never settle while its logic remained anchored to a mind that believed erasure was mercy.
Rommulas straightened fully, ignoring the way his legs shook, the way the space beneath him wavered uncertainly.
Wing Ridden Angel shifted again.
The wings drew closer to his back, bones locking into configuration that felt less like flight and more like bracing. The violet veins brightened, threading through the white like a promise made under strain.
Not a god. Not a savior. A limit.
“The Hole in the Earth won’t stop,” Rommulas said quietly. “Not while you exist.”
Roan laughed, a short, genuine sound. “You think you can kill me? You think killing me fixes this?”
“Yes,” Rommulas said. “Because containment isn’t about control. It’s about removal of the source.”
Roan’s smile faded.
For the first time, something like uncertainty flickered across his face—not fear, but recognition.
Rottweiler growled, flame intensifying.
Noah’s voice surged through the body, desperate and raw.
“What the fuck? You said this was mercy,” he begged. “You said you’d take the paint away—look at all this messed up shit you’ve done!”
Roan snarled. “I am taking it away.”
Rommulas took a step forward.
The ground resisted.
He took another.
Pain flared white-hot through his legs, his spine, his chest. Wing Ridden Angel held him together by sheer insistence, the evolved structure absorbing strain that Oblivion once would have erased.
Every movement was now consequence made flesh.
And he accepted it.
“This is only going to end one way,” Rommulas said, meeting Roan’s gaze. “Not because it’s right. Not because it’s clean. But because it’s the only option left.”
Roan stared back at him, eyes burning violet.
Rottweiler tensed.
Above them, Frankfurt cracked wider, the city paying the price for a decision that had already been made.
And Rommulas stepped forward anyway—knowing, finally, that stopping Roan would cost him everything that made restraint possible. But… it would stop the Hole in the Earth, and that was enough.
The Hole in the Earth stopped pretending to be precise. What had once been a machine of intention—angles aligning, vectors chosen with ruthless efficiency—now stuttered. The arena still moved, still fought, but it did so unevenly, like a body losing coordination while insisting it could still run.
Glass sheets shattered without being thrown. Rebar bent and snapped without direction. Cables whipped through the air recoiled uselessly, striking walls that were no longer where the Hole in the Earth thought they were. Distance shortened, then overshot itself, leaving gaps where there should have been certainty.
Roan felt it immediately. Irritation. The Hole in the Earth was no longer finishing thoughts for him.
Rottweiler paced in jagged arcs, flame sputtering between deep violet and unstable white. Its movements were still lethal, still fast—but no longer perfect. Each lunge carried a fraction of hesitation. Each strike corrected itself mid-motion, as if waiting for instructions that arrived too late.
Roan narrowed his eyes. “Oh fuck off, you’re destabilizing it,” he said in a manner that seemed like he was trying to pass it off as calmly. “That’s irresponsible.”
Rommulas did not answer.
He moved forward again, each step deliberate, costly. Without Oblivion, the world pressed back harder with every motion, gravity deciding late, pressure misaligning just enough to punish him for daring to advance.
Wing Ridden Angel held. Its structure had finished evolving—no longer wings meant for ascent, but a frame meant to keep him together. Bone-light locked along his spine, violet veins glowing brighter as strain increased, redistributing force inward rather than outward.
The Hole in the Earth resisted him, not out of loyalty to Roan, but out of confusion.
Rottweiler lunged, this time it misjudged distance.
Its jaws snapped shut inches from Rommulas’s chest, heat washing over him in a wave that scorched skin and stole breath—but it missed. Rommulas struck back instinctively, not with force but with weight, driving his shoulder into the beast’s flank.
The impact staggered it.
Rottweiler skidded across fractured tile, claws screeching uselessly as it struggled to regain footing. Flame flickered, unstable.
Roan’s lips pressed thin.
“You’re choosing suffering,” he said, voice still certain. “You don’t have to.”
Rommulas finally looked at him.
“Stop calling it a choice,” he said hoarsely. “You removed everything that made it one.”
Roan shook his head slowly. “No, idiot. I’m offering you relief, the same relief I offered everyone else. I wouldn’t expect you to realize this, you haven’t been human for even a year.”
The Hole in the Earth groaned, a deep structural sound that echoed upward through Frankfurt’s bones. Somewhere far above, another building failed—not explosively, but quietly, giving up after being asked to hold too much for too long.
Roan spread his hands.
“Look around you, Left to Right,” he said. “This is what consequence does. It piles pain until something breaks. I can stop that. I can remove what makes people hesitate, like how you hesitated with the Taboo user.”
Rottweiler struck again—too fast, too close.
Rommulas barely managed to deflect the blow with Wing Ridden Angel’s braced structure, the impact rattling through his body like a car crash. He slammed into a wall that rippled on contact, geometry protesting the collision.
Pain exploded through him. Real pain.
The kind Oblivion used to dissolve.
He tasted blood. “You’re wrong,” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re removing humanity.”
Roan scoffed. “You haven’t even begun truly understanding humanity,” he said disappointingly. “Humanity is inefficient. You suffer because you still feel consequence, allow me to take it away.”
He stepped closer.
The Hole in the Earth tried to accommodate him—and failed.
The ground beneath Roan cracked unevenly, the surface miscalculating its own support. Roan adjusted without alarm, but the momentary loss of cohesion did not go unnoticed.
Inside him, something broke.
NOAH
This is it.
The realization arrived without panic, without distortion.
If I live, he continues.
Noah felt the truth settle into him with terrifying calm. Every time Roan spoke of mercy, the Hole in the Earth tightened. Every time Roan removed something—fear, pain, hesitation—the world lost another boundary it needed to survive.
For me to die, Noah understood, means he can no longer terrorize the world.
The thought did not come with heroism, only inevitability.
I’m done being your excuse, Noah said.
Roan flinched.
“Be quiet,” Roan snapped. “You’re afraid. That’s all this is.”
No, Noah replied. I’m tired of you using me for Rottweiler. I’m done pretending fear is the problem again.
Rottweiler faltered again, flame guttering as the internal pressure spiked.
Roan hissed, clenching his fists. “I told you—I’m doing this for you.”
You’re doing this so you don’t have to listen anymore, Noah said.
The Hole in the Earth lurched.
The obedience cracked.
Rommulas felt the opportunity.
He moved, closing in.
The arena tried to intervene—rebar twisting upward, glass accelerating toward him—but the motions lacked coordination now, the Hole in the Earth’s logic unraveling as Roan lost control over the narrative that had sustained it.
Katie’s absence burned in his chest.
Mira’s scream echoed in memory.
Julius’s certainty strengthened him.
Frankfurt breaking above them was no longer abstract.
Rommulas reached Roan.
Close enough to smell ozone and scorched metal.
Close enough to see the fine tremor in Roan’s hands.
Roan met his gaze.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly. “I can still remove what hurts. I can still make this clean.”
Rommulas did not reply.
There was no speech worth contesting.
He stepped inside Roan’s reach.
Do it, Noah said.
Rottweiler tried to intervene—its form surging forward—but the flame collapsed inward, structure failing as Noah refused to sustain it.
Rommulas drove his hand forward.
Not with flourish.
Not with ceremony.
He struck Roan at the center of the mass, where body met will, grounding the force directly through himself into the man who had mistaken erasure for mercy.
Bone cracked.
Roan gasped.
The sound was small.
Human.
Rommulas did not hesitate.
He finished it.
Close, grounded.
Irreversible.
Roan went still.
Inside him, Noah felt the end arrive at the same instant—not as terror, not as pain, not in the same way it did in Miami.
As release.
Thank you, Noah thought, and was gone.
Rottweiler froze. Flame flickered, then collapsed. It simply… ceased.
The Hole in the Earth howled. It did not close, it did not heal, it lost cohesion. Pressure surged outward in violent, uncoordinated waves, cracks ripping through Frankfurt’s structure as the logic holding the wound together failed without its anchor.
Buildings groaned.
The city screamed.
Rommulas staggered back as the ground buckled violently beneath him, Wing Ridden Angel bracing with everything it had left. He did not look at Roan’s body again.
There was nothing left to say.
The Hole in the Earth thrashed, uncontrolled now—no longer guided by mercy or removal or narrative.
Just damage.
And Rommulas stood at the center of it, breathing hard, bloodied, stripped of everything that made restraint easy.
Isaac Roan was dead.
Noah Vale was gone.
Both for good, this time.
The terror was over.
What remained would cost everything to survive.