The air within the machine chamber thickened, like glass beginning to melt.
The gate thrummed irregularly, runes pulsing in a sequence Luthar had not programmed. They flared with hues that bent the eye—colors that didn't exist moments before, now shimmering like oil on blood. Geometries twisted in midair. What had been clean, sharp machinery warped, as if unseen fingers were folding reality like parchment.
A sound rose—not mechanical. Not divine.
A choir of whispers.
Freya took a step back, her divine senses flaring to life. Her skin prickled, her instincts roaring. This thing was not of Gekai. Not of any realm she had known. Her eyes could not define it.
Then the core split—not shattered, but parted, like silk drawn away from rot—and something began to push through.
It had no legs, not yet. Just a towering torso—elongated, serpentine, and covered in glimmering, pulsating feathers of shifting color. Each one seemed to blink with a dozen tiny eyes. Its arms—if they were arms—ended in hands that split and recombined, fingers spiraling into fractal claws that shimmered with blue fire.
Its head was the worst of all.
No true face—just a mask. A mask that changed with every blink: the visage of a dying man, a weeping child, a woman laughing with a mouth full of knives, a cogwheel that bled ink, and an owl with too many eyes. Each form flickered, overlaying the last. And above it all, an eye opened in the center of its brow, ringed with violet flame.
It saw them.
"I am the ripple from the first thought," it whispered. "I am the promise of knowledge."
Luthar stepped in front of Freya. Instinctive. Useless. But he did it anyway.
The demon didn't fully emerge. It couldn't. The dimensional rules of this world buckled against it. The chamber screamed—metal tearing not from force, but from wrongness. Servo arms twisted into spirals. Panels wept molten code.
"You named yourself Cogbane," the voice echoed through the air and into their bones. "Did you think yourself beyond the game, architect? You opened the gate with ignorance."
Luthar raised his palm, invoking hard-coded shutdowns.
"Emergency seal: RED-LINE 8087—Adeptus override."
"You speak as if you still rule here," the creature replied. "But this is a new page. A new script. And I—" Its mask shifted. A face made of circuitry and rusted prayers. "— I am the future."
Erratically, runes dimmed and then re-ignited. Something inside the machine now refused to comply with Luthar's shutdown command.
He began to take control of his own signal signature. "Avoid inheriting patterns. Stop the transmission. Disconnect the system's power supply.
The demon held on, though just a little more time and it would completely materialize in this world.
Luthar's mouth formed a thin line. Only one choice remained.
He said in his mind, "System, start direct displacement. violent eviction.
[Warning: Not all stabilizer is active. It might cause damage to the chosen target.]
"Do it."
There was a pause in the system. Then it obeyed.
From the center of the chamber silent pressure. Not light or fire, but will, pressed into a specific direction. As though pulled by invisible strings, the demon's glittering feathers flared, unraveled, and then snapped backward.
The creature let out a howl of disappointment rather than pain.
"Mortal, take one step... and all the wisdom—"
The eye widened. Then closed the blink.
Like a slit stitched by invisible hands, the wound in space got fixed, making the demon disappear.
The room grew dark.
There was only the sound of Freya's controlled, sharp breath. There was the lingering smell of charred sigils.
Luthar gazed at the lifeless device.
"One step," he said in a raw whisper. "It only required that."
Freya remained silent for a while.
Her gaze was focused on the platform as she stood in the cool ruins. It had scarred runes and a blackened brass surface. None of it, however, was comparable to the wound that was now subtly blossoming in her mind.
War was something she had witnessed. She had witnessed monsters. She had seen the gods descend, mortals become conceited, and ignorant people looking for power laugh.
However, this thing was unique.
There had been no divine authority, no soul. It's not even a dungeon aberration.
What had peered through the veil had done so without being summoned. did not care who she was.
It didn't even look at her.
"I couldn't see it," she murmured.
Her voice was quiet but sharp. Her divine senses
"I could feel it... but I could not understand. Like trying to catch light in ."
Luthar, crouched beside the engine, gave a humorless smile. "It's a good thing you don't understand it. Anyone who did... didn't get a good ending."
She looked at him then, truly looked. Behind the calm mask.
"You faced that... and more... in your world?" she asked softly.
He met her gaze. "That was just a fragment. An echo that slipped through. Usually they start with whispers. Then legions."
Freya's eyes narrowed. "And how do you fight them?"
"By not remembering," Luthar replied. "Not seeing. Not hearing."
She returned her gaze to the platform. "Then how was it able to come here? You didn't invite it."
"My memories were suppressed. I had no precautions for something I couldn't remember." He looked down, his voice bitter. "I built a bridge—and something waved back."
Freya's silence stretched, then broke.
"It ignored me," she said at last. "I was in the room. It didn't acknowledge me. Not out of contempt... but because I didn't matter."
She was Freya—goddess of love, war, and longing. Her name bent kings and mortals alike. But that thing just ignored her like she didn't matter.
"I want to see that thing destroyed."
Her words came cool and certain. But behind them lay something rare: wounded pride. Not vanity, but an existential reminder that there are powers older than worship, colder than gods.
Luthar rose. "Then you can just wait because one day I'm going to beat that blue crow to death."
For the first time, his voice was filled with quiet fury. He had already achieved his dream. But now something from beyond had reached into his world. That, he would not accept.
"I'm going to join you," she said, stepping toward the blackened core. "I will not let something ignore me like that."
"It's better if the Chaos gods ignore you," Luthar muttered. But he understood. If you had never experienced the horror of the 41st millennium... you could never understand why ignorance was good.
And why remembering was the first step toward damnation.
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