The transition into the simulated future was seamless. The damp cave air vanished, replaced by the sterile, reprocessed atmosphere of the Incubator's access corridors.

  In this Glimpse, I was a ghost watching a play I had already rehearsed. But even rehearsals have friction.

  “The overload breach has been successful,” Nyx’s voice came through the comms, tense and clipped. “Grid destabilized. Evacuation protocols are triggering. The Loyalists are proceeding as usual. They have barricades at the West Wing.”

  I checked the monitor feeds I was leeching from an infiltrated terminal. In the simulation, I saw the flaw in our rescue. The Collaborator militias weren’t just fleeing; they were creating chokepoints, using heavy weaponry to hold back the refugee tide so they could monopolize the Nexus pads. It was a massacre in slow motion.

  “Rexxar?” I pinged the Delta-7 team.

  “We have the Hub!” Rexxar roared, but there was strain in his voice. "They had a Golem battalion hidden in the cargo loaders! Some of the cubs were pinned! We took some casualties.”

  I grit my teeth, forcing myself to watch. I needed to see exactly how they died so I could keep them alive later. I memorized the firing angles of the hidden constructs. I marked the ventilation shaft where the Loyalist mages had flanked Rexxar’s position.

  Meanwhile, in Akkadia, the distraction worked too well. With the mana grid draining into the evacuation portals, the City Shields failed.

  The Monster Tide didn’t just breach; it flooded. Tier 4 and 5 Behemoths crashed through the perimeter walls. Many Kyorian soldiers panicked, abandoning their posts.

  I moved to the objective: The Singularity Engine.

  I deployed the Siege-Stars in the vision. The timing was slightly off. The explosion ripple didn’t catch the third pillar perfectly. The Spectres arrived — Tier 7 nightmares of reflected light. I fought them. It was more sloppy than I’d liked. I took a few hits and had to use a decent amount of mana healing.

  And then Vayne arrived.

  I saw her drop from the ceiling, encased in combat-white armor. We clashed. In the Glimpse, she didn’t fight to win; she fought to leave. Even she couldn’t hide the look of perplexed surprise on her face, wondering how everything was breached so seamlessly. She activated a [Dimensional Anchor] on her chest-plate, aiming to warp herself to the Pyramid above. I tried to stop her with a blast of Force, but the Anchor pulled her out of reality before the blow landed.

  She escaped.

  The Siege-Stars detonated a moment later.

  I watched Akkadia die. A black sphere of gravitational negation bloomed in the city center. It ate the Incubator. It ate the foundations. The city crumbled inward, millions of tons of plasteel screaming as they were spaghettified into nothingness.

  I slammed back into my body in the cave. The dawn light hadn’t changed.

  I exhaled a breath I felt I had been holding for an hour.

  “Analysis,” Nyx asked immediately.

  “Rexxar,” I keyed the crystal, my voice razor-sharp. “Delta-7, Cargo Bay Three. There is a hidden bulkhead. Behind it is a Mechanized Walker squadron. They ambush you at the three-minute mark. Pre-fire that bulkhead. Bury them before they activate.”

  “Understood!” Rexxar responded. He was getting used to my precognitive instructions. “Consider them crushed.”

  “And watch the ventilation,” I added. “Loyalist mages. Nyx, the Collaborator chokepoints are at sectors 4 and 9. Before you trigger the evac signal, override the fire suppression systems in those corridors. Flush them out.”

  “Done,” Nyx nodded, her eyes gleaming.

  “And Vayne…” I stood up, adjusting my armor. I summoned an Ashen Sword from my [Domain], feeling the weight of the coming violence. “She uses a specialized Dimensional Anchor to retreat. It pulses on a specific Void-Frequency. I will try to override the mechanism the moment she activates it... she will not escape.”

  We went through our plans and any adjustments for the Glimpse’s cooldown, briefing everyone’s roles and adding more contingencies.

  I wanted to use another preemptive Glimpse to make sure everything goes perfectly before execution, but a presence in the Station orbiting our planet put us on a short time limit.

  A strange sensation engulfed my thoughts. All of our planning would be for nothing if we waited any longer. After a long discussion, talking with Kasian and others regarding the ominous feeling I had and Nyx confirming it was accurate, we decided it was time to proceed.

  “We have our plan,” I said. “Let’s go. I just know that we can not wait for that thing to arrive, its mere presence would cause too many changes. I have seen enough, our window is closing.”

  The real thing felt eerily slower than the simulation. My perception was overclocked, every second stretching out into minute detail.

  “Phase One initiated,” Nyx signaled.

  Below us, the lights of Akkadia flickered. The infiltration device Leoric had coded surged through the Nexus. Every screen in the city flashed red.

  The confusion was instant. Just like the Glimpse, the response was fluid. Nyx’s pre-emptive hacks triggered the fire suppression systems in the Collaborator strongholds, flooding their barricades with suppression foam. The refugee paths remained clear.

  “Delta-7 secured,” Rexxar’s report came in barely an hour later. “The cargo bay collapsed on the Walkers. No casualties. The Gate is open. We are ready to receive the first wave.”

  “Hold the line,” I whispered.

  Now it was my turn.

  I stepped off the cliff and engaged [Void Walk].

  I walked the causal strings through the panicking city, ghosting past riot lines and crumbling walls. The City Shields dropped as the immense mana-cost of the evacuation drained the grid.

  The roar of the Monster Tide hitting the unprotected city was deafening. Tier 4 Hydras tore through the residential districts, but the streets were empty; the people were already leaving, streaming through the open gates. The only ones left were the soldiers fighting a hopeless rearguard action and the collaborators who found their override codes rejected by Leoric’s filters.

  I ignored them. I descended.

  The Incubator facility was in chaos.

  I entered the main hall. In the Glimpse, I had been intercepted here.

  Not this time.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Deploy,” I commanded, opening the [Singularity Chamber].

  I didn’t stop moving. I used a [Void Walk] to enter the North Pillar. The aperture opened for a split second, vomiting out a massive Siege-Star. It slammed into the bedrock with a heavy thud.

  I planted the bombs before the guards even realized I was in the building.

  Then, the Spectres materialized.

  Three of them. Tier 7 Mirror-Faces.

  They unfolded from the walls, raising their hands to crush the anomaly.

  In the first Glimpse, they had caught me by surprise. Here, I knew their exact moment of arrival.

  I stepped out of the Void inside the personal space of the first Spectre. Before he could register the threat, I activated a Gravity-Spike Leoric had prepared — a smaller grenade-like version while still holding a substantial amount of Void Essence.

  I shoved it into the fold of his cloak and went back into the Void.

  The grenade triggered. The Spectre didn’t explode; he imploded. His mirror armor crumpled inward, snapping his spine and crushing his Essence into a ball.

  One down. Two seconds elapsed.

  The second Spectre turned, raising a barrier, an action I had already witnessed. I threw an Ashen Sword — not at him, but at the Essence gate above him.

  The gate burst. Frost Essence, meant to cool the Engine of the Singularity, showered the Spectre. His mirror cloak froze, the reflective properties dulled by the thermal shock.

  With another [Void Walk], I appeared behind him. I drove a punch coated in [Apex Mana Authority] through his now-brittle spine.

  With his Domain fully focused on stopping the foreign Essence, he was not able to stop my attack. He instantly shattered.

  The third Spectre hesitated. It was calculating new variables. It hadn’t expected such efficient brutality, slowly realizing that something was wrong.

  It tried to flee. It opened a spatial rift.

  I was already there. I grabbed the edge of his rift and closed it on him. Space snapped shut like a guillotine, bisecting him into two.

  “Clear,” I said to the empty room.

  My mana pulsed. A presence arrived.

  The blast doors blew inward.

  Commander Vayne descended. Her white armor gleamed in the emergency lights. She landed in a crater of her own making, eyes scanning the wreckage of her elite guard.

  “You,” she hissed. It was the exact tone from the vision. The exact expression of fury.

  But this time, I was ready.

  I didn’t engage in banter. I didn’t posture.

  As she raised her hand to fire the singularity projector, I acted.

  [Void Walk].

  I appeared at her flank. I struck not at her, but at her gauntlet. The Ashen Sword sheared through the projector unit before she could trigger it. The weapon sparked and died.

  Vayne shrieked, backhanding me with enough force to crack my ribs. I rode the blow, sliding backward, using the momentum to position myself between her and the exit.

  “What are you?!” she screamed, her composure disintegrating. “How are you...”

  She realized then. The look in her eyes shifted from rage to survival instinct. Something was off with the way I dismantled each threat.

  She slapped the chest plate of her armor. The [Dimensional Anchor] whined to life, beginning the frequency modulation for the emergency teleport. It was the same move that had saved her in the Glimpse.

  “Not this time,” I growled.

  I didn’t try to hit her. I hit the concept of her escape.

  I engaged my [Domain]. I poured everything into a Nullifaction zone.

  “Jeeves! Broadcast the noise!”

  Through the link, Jeeves flooded the local area with the preset mana devices.

  Vayne’s anchor flared. The teleport initiated... and stalled. The destination coordinates were scrambled. She flickered, turning translucent, but she didn’t leave. She was trapped between "Here" and "There."

  “No!” she screamed, clawing at the air.

  I walked forward. I grabbed her by the throat plating of her armor.

  “Here’s your Variable,” I whispered.

  I engulfed her within my [Domain].

  I poured fire directly into her armor’s core. The intricate Kyorian machinery melted in seconds. The mana-batteries keeping her shields up degraded into dust. The lights on her suit died.

  She was just a Tier 7 crafter in a heavy metal suit now.

  I punched her. A simple, physical strike amplified by Peak Tier 6 Strength.

  Her helmet cracked. She slumped, her death confirmed by an influx of Essence.

  Above us, the facility groaned. The Siege-Stars were priming.

  I looked at the central pillar — the tether connecting the ground to the Pyramid in the sky.

  “Jeeves, drop the shield,” I ordered.

  “Deployment complete, Sir,” Jeeves answered. "The refugees are clear. It is time."

  I looked at the body of the Commander.

  I grabbed her. Not wanting to have any chance of her surviving.

  I stepped back. I opened the Singularity Chamber’s aperture to retrieve one item — my escape route.

  I activated the [Siege-Star] triggers.

  I [Void Walked] out of the facility, pushing my speed to the absolute limit, aiming for the cliffs outside the city.

  Behind me, the world ended.

  It was an implosion of impossible magnitude.

  A sound like a god inhaling violently sucked the air out of the valley. The ground beneath Akkadia liquefied.

  The four Siege-Stars detonated in a cascade. The foundation of the Incubator vanished into a super-dense gravity well.

  The Anchor Beam snapped.

  The feedback traveled up the beam.

  High above, the Black Pyramid lurched. Its engines screamed, trying to compensate for the sudden loss of tether and the massive gravitational drag from below.

  For a second, I thought it would fall and crush the city.

  But Kyorian tech was stubborn. Emergency contingencies deployed. The Pyramid shrieked, firing maneuvering thrusters that turned the night sky white. It broke orbit, tearing itself free from the gravity well of the dying city. It fled upward, seeking the safety of the High Orbit Station.

  It escaped. Damaged, bleeding mana, but it was not destroyed.

  The city wasn’t so lucky.

  I stood on the cliff edge, watching.

  The Incubator collapsed first. The Singularity Engine at its heart went critical, merging with the artificial black holes of my weapons.

  A sphere of absolute darkness expanded.

  It touched the Governor’s Palace. The palace stretched, spaghettified, and vanished into the dark.

  The sphere grew. It ate the central districts. The tall white towers bent like grass in a hurricane, dragged into the maw. The sheer noise of the destruction was lost — gravity ate the soundwaves.

  Within minutes, the center of Akkadia was gone.

  In its place was a crater thirty miles wide, a bowl of bedrock polished smooth by the forces of the universe. The edges of the city remained — the slums, the outer walls — but the heart was excised.

  The Incubator. The Golems. The Collaborators. Vayne.

  All gone.

  “All targets destroyed,” I whispered, the wind whipping my cloak.

  I looked up. The sky felt clear for the first time in years.

  High above, an almost star-like structure moved. The Space Station, flickering as it disappeared into the sky.

  It felt... too easy.

  I frowned. Vayne fell for the bait. The Spectres died quickly. The city fell without much of a fight.

  It wasn’t easy, I corrected myself, feeling the exhaustion deep in my marrow. I just knew the answers beforehand.

  We had spent weeks in the mud, in the Glimpse, suffering deaths that never happened so we could execute this one, perfect moment.

  I turned away from the abyss.

  “Jeeves?”

  “Sir. Excess refugees are arriving in Silverwood. Casualties are minimal. The extraction was over 90% successful.”

  “And Delta-7?”

  “Rexxar has just detonated the main support beams. The military hub is a pile of rubble. The main group of refugees are being redirected to the residential squares.”

  "Good."

  I looked back at the sky one last time. The Empire was bloodied. They knew, now. They knew this wasn’t a rebellion of savages.

  It was a war. A war they could actually lose.

  I used [Void Walk] in rapid succession to return home, Nyx having already made the journey. The warm light of the Veiled Path beckoned.

  Akkadia has fallen.