Yellow Jacket

The world began to collapse.

The Warlord stepped forward, and the earth groaned beneath him. Each motion pulled more of the world inward. Stone cracked. Walls bowed. The air screamed in silence as pressure built around the dense, silent core forming above his head.

Black Hole Sun did not burn. It devoured.

Rain that once fell in clean arcs toward the earth now twisted sideways, sucked into the slow spiral of gravity gone mad. Everything light was taken first, dust, water, ash, then heavier things: splinters of structure, chunks of stone, bent steel fixtures still embedded in ancient ruins. The battlefield warped in on itself, drawn toward the Warlord like a dying star pulling at its final breath.

And then the light changed.

Rays of refracted destruction burst outward from the edges of the singularity. Not beams of light, these were cracks in reality, jagged rifts that tore toward Warren at impossible angles. They screamed without sound, moving not in straight lines but in bent paths that folded through air like twisted reflections. They didn't radiate out; they searched, aimed, hunted.

Warren didn't run. He vanished, reappeared, moved with impossible precision between collapsing stones and shattering ruins, the flicker of his presence cutting through the field like a ghost through a storm. Every step he took was calculated to avoid the impossible. He let nothing slow him. He darted between collapsed barricades, skirted the rim of a frozen fountain now bending toward the void. His eyes never left the Warlord.

The first ray missed.

The second did not. It carved through a support beam and took the floor with it, the entire platform imploding as matter was folded in half. Another beam seared the edge of a collapsed tower, the stones crumpling inward like they had never been solid.

Warren's coat snapped behind him as he dashed through a new burst of sideways gravity, ducking just as a rail of destruction screamed overhead and punched a hole through a stone wall thick enough to withstand artillery. The hole didn't smoke. It didn't burn. It was just... gone.

He fired three more flechettes in the same breath. One skipped off the Warlord's shoulder. One buried itself in the collapsing ground. The third veered off course mid-air, dragged by the singularity's growing pull, and vanished before it hit anything.

The Warlord laughed. Not maniacal. It was worse than that. It was pleased.

He opened his stance, blades wide, eyes locked. Every breath from his lungs now warped the air. Every step fractured the battlefield further.

Warren adjusted. Still no words. Still no panic.

Just motion, and the storm responding to him.

But even the rain now bowed to the gravity that wasn't supposed to exist. It fell slanted, then sideways, then straight up. Water peeled off surfaces like ink drawn by magnetism. Pools warped into upward spirals.

The gods watched.

The Spitter leaned forward, arms crossed, and spat a laugh that shook the air with raw mirth.

The Silent radiated silent disgust, wordless, soundless, but absolute. It pressed like the disapproval of eternity, heavier than contempt, colder than void.

Umdar laughed. Dry and crumbling. Like something that remembered the shape of a man

The Silvered Maiden did not blink.

And Warren kept circling.

He knew something had to change. His shots weren't working. The rain wasn't his to command. He couldn't close the distance, not without being pulled into the crushing field of gravity that warped even light. And the flechettes, the few he had left, were bending off course the moment they left his lance.

This was a killing field of someone else's making.

Still, he moved. Still, he thought. His hand reached for the nearest flechette lodged in the side of a crumpled beam, worth recovering. His body didn't break stride. Even as he calculated distance and torque and breath.

The Warlord raised one hand, not to strike, but to pull. A ripple of vacuum tore the roof from a half-buried hauler, spun it in the air like paper, then flung it toward Warren as a makeshift projectile.

Warren ducked. The hauler slammed into a frozen soldier, one of the enemy from before, crumpling against the immovable figure with a scream of twisted metal, folding like paper around a body that would not yield. The impact rang, sharp and echoing, but the statue-man did not move, did not crack. It was like trying to break the world's own spine.

Nothing could be trusted anymore. The terrain was a weapon. The air was a knife. And the Warlord, this tyrant reborn from death, was the center of a storm that Warren didn't control.

The world had come undone.

Warren had fought monsters and men. He'd stood at the edge of storms and walked through fire. But this was different.

This was gravity made rage. This was a battlefield no longer beholden to rules or rhythm. This was loss being rewritten in real time.

He was losing.

Every step forward cost too much. His vision blurred not from blood or pain, but from distortion, from warped air and fractured sight. His lungs strained against weight that wasn't there a second before. His legs moved, but slower now, less sure. Not from fear, but from physics being rewritten against him.

And still, the Warlord advanced.

Each motion tore another scar through the field. The ground bent to him. The storm, the sky, the very structure of the ruins, they were all just scaffolding being stripped bare. Nothing solid remained.

Warren fired. Moved. Grabbed another flechette. Fired again. But none of it mattered. His shots warped mid-flight. His angles closed before he could exploit them. The gravity field was no longer just a barrier, it was a net. A living noose tightening with every breath.

He ducked behind a sloped fragment of stone, only to watch it collapse into itself under the Warlord's pressure. Walls folded. Metal screamed. Every bit of terrain that might offer cover warped before he could reach it. His instincts were sharp. But physics had turned traitor.

He lunged across broken tile, rolled, came up firing. Another flechette disappeared in the air. Another warped to the left. One struck true, barely, grazing the Warlord's arm, drawing a line of red across the plated skin. It wasn't enough. Nothing was.

Grix watched from the divine perch, frozen in helpless fury. Her jaw worked as if chewing through her own tongue. Her fists trembled. Her expression twisted with every fresh strike Warren failed to land. This felt like a betrayal. It was watching justice be undone by spectacle.

The Spitter spat again. A thick, ugly noise that dripped with hatred. Not for Warren. Not even for the Warlord. But for the god who had allowed this stage to form.

The Silent made no move. But the air around him thinned. Even the absence of words condemned what they saw.

Umdar laughed like an old bag of dust that still somehow held the shape of a man. His delight made the black sky darker. His mirth, deeper than rot.

And still Warren moved.

He slid low under a wave of warped air. One boot caught on fractured stone. He turned the fall into a forward roll, came up on one knee, and fired blind. It missed. But the movement saved him from a line of force that split the earth behind him.

He adjusted again. Not out of hope. But because stillness was death.

He ducked left, drew a new line with his lance, but the trajectory curved, yanked away by gravity's twisted hand. He was being erased. Not all at once, but piece by piece.

Another shot. Another step. Another dodge. His coat caught a ripple of energy and twisted. A button turned inside out. A strap unraveled. The environment was coming apart.

The Warlord advanced without haste. Controlled. Confident. Unbothered.

"Do you feel it yet, Ghost? The pull? The inevitability? This is not power. This is truth."

Warren didn't answer.

He didn't speak.

Because he couldn't spare the breath.

Above the ruined compound, the Silvered Maiden stood unmoving, but not untouched.

Her wings, once folded like judgment at rest, had begun to arc slightly outward, razor tips trembling as if resisting a command she did not give. Her eyes, always ablaze with creation's fire, dimmed, not with defeat, but with sorrow.

The lines of her armor strained subtly with tension. A single gauntleted hand clenched at her side, knuckles pressed white against steel. The stormlight flickered across her form, revealing not rage, but mourning.

She had forged warriors before. Had witnessed champions fall. But this one, this soul, was never hers to call, and yet still she burned for him. Not as a god for a subject, but as a maker watching a masterpiece destroyed by the hands of others.

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Her gaze did not waver from Warren's form. Not when the earth buckled or when the sky bent. Not even when Umdar's laughter thickened the air like mold.

And though her mouth did not move, every line of her stance spoke one truth:

This should not be.

The world still buckled under the weight of the Warlord's Skill.

Warren darted low, looping wide now, watching how the warping rain bent in wide spirals. That was the tell. The collapse point didn't stretch indefinitely. The pull wasn't endless. He stopped testing shots and started testing space.

One angle, clean.

Another, slightly curved, but no collapse.

There was a border.

Warren vanished again, shifted behind a broken scaffold. The moment the gravity pull thinned enough for his breath to stop catching in his throat, he pushed harder. Distance. That was the answer.

And just like that...

He broke free.

The rain straightened. The flechettes followed a normal arc again. The weight fell from his body like water shedding from an oiled coat. He almost laughed.

The Skill had range. Real power, but not absolute.

He doubled over behind cover, chest rising hard. The pull was gone, but it had pressed deep, and his breath came like rust shaken from old vents. A few precious seconds to recover. He scanned, recalculated. Read the layout again. Maybe there was a path.

"So you ran," the Warlord called. Voice clean, unstrained. "Not far enough."

Warren didn't answer. He couldn't afford the breath.

And then the world dimmed again.

The Warlord snarled, and the void pulsed. The black sun that had floated just behind him warped. Twisted. Then condensed.

It wasn't just power anymore.

It had form.

A sphere of concentrated darkness, dense and flexing with inward pressure, formed at his side. It shimmered with hungry gravity, like a wound in the world that had learned to look back. Then it moved.

The Mobile Sun.

It hovered with weightless precision, then surged forward, dragging warped air and collapsing terrain with it. The Warlord guided it with one outstretched hand, body still locked in his hardened stance. He didn't walk. He didn't run. He commanded.

Warren's advantage vanished.

The Skill wasn't just an area denial weapon anymore. It was a predator. Fast. Precise. Controlled.

Warren kept moving, but now the terrain shifted under his feet even faster. Gravity bent around him again. The momentary relief he'd found became a new cage. The Warlord had changed the shape of the battlefield again.

He rolled to avoid a flying shard of bent rebar, only to find it curving back toward him midair. The Mobile Sun twisted its trajectory, yanking debris from one path into another. Warren dove under a frozen scaffolding support just before the metal beam slammed into it with enough force to warp steel.

He was no longer avoiding a man. He was avoiding a singularity.

The ground cracked beneath his boots. Each step felt like wading through invisible tides. His own weight betrayed him, sometimes pulling right, sometimes dragging him left. There was no pattern to the flow, just chaos with a will.

The Mobile Sun pulsed again.

Warren skidded around a block of frozen humans using their bodies like cover. The void didn't touch them. It bent around them. The gods' freeze was stronger than physics. At least for now.

Another flechette curved unnaturally and buried itself in stone, far from its intended target.

Warren swore under his breath and picked up two that hadn't hit anything critical, jamming them back into his bandolier. He couldn't waste shots.

And yet the Warlord still hadn't moved. Not truly. Just that one arm guiding destruction. Just that voice echoing with certainty.

"This is the weight of stolen fate," the Warlord called, almost conversational. "The world bends for me now. And you? You're just in the way."

Warren launched another volley, then ducked sideways as the Mobile Sun bent light and matter alike around its core. The flechettes bent away. All but one.

One struck true.

A shallow line opened just under the Warlord's left eye.

He stopped smiling.

Warren disappeared again. He reappeared behind a twisted length of pipe, but the sun felt him. It turned, smooth as death, dragging its cone of ruin with it.

He sprinted.

The edge of the Skill's range was just there, just outside the curve of the street. If he could make it, he could loop, draw it off-course.

But the Warlord wasn't a fool.

The Mobile Sun split. Not entirely. Just a sliver. A side orb, smaller, jagged, formed from the original and spun wide. A distraction? No. A pincer.

The fight was turning.

Warren dove through the wreck of a hauler cab, metal slashing at his coat. He barely cleared the other side before the rear half imploded under the pressure.

The Mobile Sun was now everywhere he wasn't, and trying to fix that.

"What's the matter, whoever-you-are?" the Warlord jeered. "Never seen real power before? I break worlds. You're just another crack in the dirt."

Warren landed behind the frame of a collapsed stairwell and didn't reply. He wasn't just tired. He was thinking.

The Skill had shape now. Shape could be broken. Or redirected.

He needed to shift from reaction to disruption.

No more running. If this was a storm, he would not be the prey. He would be the lightning.

Warren pressed deeper into shadow, each breath sharp, shallow, controlled. His mind ran faster than his body, calculating impact, reading behavior. The warlord was confident. Good. Confidence warped into routine. Routine could be broken.

But not yet.

He needed a cycle. A full rotation. Domain, then shift. The mobile sun was chasing him now, but he couldn't let it stay that way. Not forever.

He watched. Waited. The black sphere pulsed, streaked with lightless arcs that carved through stone and metal like paper. One seared across a wall, missing Warren by feet only because he anticipated the angle and moved before it fired. It wasn't luck. It was experience.

The warlord raised both blades, shifted his stance. The black sun slowed. The void that had once surged began to settle. Warren smiled with his teeth closed.

Here it comes.

Warren stepped from cover and opened fire. Three flechettes screamed toward the warlord, not wild but calculated. The warlord blocked two, the third grazed his cheek, a thin slice that wept blood.

He snarled, and the air shifted.

The void swelled again. The warlord's stance flattened, dropped into that familiar low form, legs wide, weapons braced. His domain form.

Warren saw what he needed. He fired again, once, twice, making the warlord lean, parry, commit.

Then Warren turned and ran.

Umdar's laughter echoed across the divine horizon. Dry and brittle as scorched paper, a cackle carried not by lungs but by collapse itself. It vibrated like entropy made sound.

The Spitter made a sound like spitting a blade from flesh, from marrow, from meaning.

The Silvered Maiden said nothing. But her hands clenched, eyes sharp, a glint of worry hidden beneath the fire.

Rain fell, heavy and angled now, pulled inward toward the warlord like all matter.

The void constricted. The black sun pulsed tighter, sharper, shifting.

The warlord roared, and the domain collapsed inward, imploded, becoming once more the mobile sun.

The black sphere chased Warren like a thrown star. It was not sluggish, but it needed to gather momentum after the shift, fractionally slow, just enough to matter.

Warren ducked low, rolled past a half-buried wall. Arcs of destructive pressure sheared the stone above him. He could feel the storm biting at his heels.

Umdar laughed louder, shrieking now, folding inward with pleasure.

Even the gods seemed to shift. The Forest bowed its head. The Twins watched, curious. The One of Mirrors tilted, reflections jittering. The Divine Beast paced, unsettled. The Silent gave no sound.

None of them saw her.

Not at first.

A blur beneath the veil of mist and motion.

Styll.

She moved like rolling vapor, low to the ground, barely there. Mist and muscle. She slipped through the cracks in attention, the blind spot between gods. Not even they noticed her approach.

Warren turned mid-stride, a look passing between them.

It was time.

The warlord advanced, the mobile sun pulsing with destructive intent. He tracked Warren's retreat, unaware of the mist that moved behind him.

Styll leapt.

Two saber-teeth, forged by evolution and nanite storm, punched through hardened skin and flesh. Her bite sank into the warlord's ankle, deep enough to strike bone.

He screamed.

Not just in pain. In surprise. Fury. Humiliation.

His leg buckled. The void wavered.

He swung down, twin blades hissing through the air. One struck stone, the other a frozen body, useless. He was off-balance. The field wobbled.

And Warren appeared.

Not from a charge. Not from above.

From behind. Quiet. Inevitable.

The truncheon was in his hand, spike already extended.

He drove it through the warlord's ear, angled sideways.

The spike passed through brain and burst from the other side.

There was no scream or second chance.

The sun collapsed.

The black field ruptured. Pressure vanished. The air rushed inward then flattened, dropping all sound.

The warlord fell to one knee, then the other.

Dead.

Truly.

Styll landed, slightly shaken, tail wagging, eyes bright.

She turned.

Styll shook herself once, padding to Warren's side. She did not purr. She did not speak. She was simply present.

Warren stood over the body, eyes on the horizon.

He didn't look up.

He didn't need to.

They were all watching.

Let them.

But among the ten, a new unease stirred. A presence lingered at the edge of recognition, heavier than storm, older than divinity.

It was not the Storyteller.

And yet it watched.

The gods stiffened. Even Aeon flickered, eyes narrowing. A sliver of fear passed across his face, a unique experience to behold.

The presence was not one of them.

And yet it was here.

Watching.

Grix lost it.

Her laugh tore loose like a live wire snapping. "Suck it, Dumdar! Your precious contender just lost to a slum rat, you old-ass bitch!"

She wasn't heard by the world, but the gods heard her.

The Spitter spat true mirth. His shoulders shook like a man mid-brawl, and even the Forest let its leaves twitch.

Umdar said nothing. His face cracked into a rictus of quiet, ancient hate.

But Grix didn't stop.

"Hope you choked on that fucking laughter, you dried-out old fart! That's your boy? That was your fucking champion?"

No one stopped her. No one could.

She leaned forward, eyes wild, baring teeth. "Looks like he got rekt by just some slumrat. Go write that into your holy little ledger."

The Silent gave no sound.

And even now, the gods refused to speak Warren's name.

But they knew it. Now.

Warren stood over the warlord's corpse without pause. No reverence or hesitation. He crouched, slipped the knife from his belt, and drove it into the warlord's spine with surgical precision. A twist. A pull. Metal met resistance, then gave way.

He reached into the wound and extracted the fragment.

The gods watched in perfect silence.

Warren didn't care.

He crushed the fragment into his palm, absorbing the skill inside it without ceremony. Power surged through him, immediate and sharp. Gravity buckled, then calmed.

Umdar shrieked.

A sound of decay and outrage, like glass cracking in a cold fire.

He raised one withered arm, smoke trailing from his sleeves, fingers bent like hooks. His voice tore from the heavens like rusted chains snapping.

"THIEF."

He moved to strike Warren down.

But the Silvered Maiden moved first.

She didn't block the strike. She cast him down.

Her wings flared, silver razors unfolding with divine fury. One step, and she was there. One motion, and Umdar's form shattered backward, collapsing in on itself, driven down by force that did not ask permission.

The ground buckled beneath him. His form cracked, curled inwards like ash trying to hold shape.

The gods did not cheer. But they did speak.

The Twins spoke first, all their mouths echoing as one: "Umdar, you have been sanctioned."

The Divine Beast prowled forward in the divine circle. "You owe three boons."

The One of Mirrors, all mirrors splintering, added, "And now you attempt direct retribution against a mortal."

"Have you no shame?" asked the Forest.

"No honor?" echoed the Silence .

"You will be removed from this cycle," Aeon stated, his voice distant and young, his tone final.

"You will serve as benefactor to the one you wronged," said the Twins.

"And grant him the arbitration you once claimed to hold sacred," added the Beast.

Umdar writhed, mouth twisting like bark caught in frost. "This is not possible. He cheated. He must have cheated. He could not have won fairly."

Then the Silvered Maiden stepped forward.

Her eyes blazed with radiant heat. Her hair flowed in coils of fire-forged steel. When she spoke, it was the sound of metal being drawn from flame.

"No," she said, and every god flinched.

"You are the one who cheated, Umdar. You bent the cycle. You forced the board. You gave power that was not earned and hoped the boy would be stopped by fear."

She raised her hand.

"Now you will see what it is to sit out the game, child."

Umdar's form twisted, drawn into silence. His limbs folded inward. His face cracked. He vanished into the space between presence and absence.

And Warren? He didn't flinch.

He turned slightly, eyes not lifted toward heaven, but locked ahead.

He was already walking away.

Behind him, the divine court shook. But he didn't look back.

Let the gods burn. He had what he came for.

The Warlord was finally dead.