The sky was filled with war and blades, wings and gunfire—a constellation of death, all crashing toward one individual.

  Despite everything she had been through, part of her was still that overworked intern—a ‘nobody’ who had spent every spare hour since childhood clawing her way through desperate opportunities and hopeless application queues, all for a chance to prove she belonged anywhere near a cutting-edge, world-leading project, even as a research intern. That had once been her greatest achievement. She had barely left New York.

  [Title Equipped: Death’s Foe (III)]

  Which is why, as her Title brought the high-speed world into focus, the sight of a skyscraper-sized battle tearing through the skyline felt wondrous; less like horror and more like watching a high-functioning body destroy itself to evolve. It felt like she was watching hundreds—no, millions—of complex cells divide across biology, machinery, and systems in real time—systems of combat, of defense, of augments and magic. Systems of life and death, each slamming into the next with so much raw data she could’ve taken notes for weeks.

  It was so much more than an opportunity to observe and experiment; it felt like the battle she was witnessing contained infinite opportunities to test herself for pure, unfiltered potential—and growth.

  Was this war? Was this what the Augment Wars looked like? The AI coups? The war in the stars? Was this what soldiers and idiot explorers saw when they crash-landed into first contact, opened with “we come in peace” while loading weapons, and negotiated with the first and only nonhuman species in the oldest wars?

  And if it thrilled her—really thrilled her—did that count as a problem? Discovery always made sense. But maybe combat did too. Perhaps that was why she found something that stretched into the clouds and detonated across itself beautiful. Maybe she was beginning to understand why some people chose war and exploration on purpose.

  It could be, that she’d enjoy both.

  Her thoughts on the idyllic nature of war and space gigs were put on hold when a few hundred rapidly firing human combatants and another few hundred razor-winged undead dropped close enough for her to spot the stylized helixes, V’s, and various insignias patched into cloth. They were close to impact—milliseconds from eviscerating everything within reach and turning her into an anatomical exhibit.

  Reacting quickly, Kelly snapped her wrist. Her chain blade darted forward, the links flashing under the light of gunfire and burning clouds. It drove through the chest of the closest angelic zombie, the impact snapping its ribs and sending a tremor through its massive frame.

  The weapon spun again, curling like a live thing and tearing into the wing of another that swept too close. The force of the hit folded the wing back on itself and dragged the creature off course, its pale feathers scattering into the air.

  She missed. She’d been aiming for their heads.

  But of course, they were too fast. Their speed bent her strike away, yet she’d already accounted for it and that movement, her mana-enhanced eyes tracking every sudden shift and measuring the space they would fall into, then changing the weapons configuration.

  Both caught themselves mid-motion and twisted to evade, yet the chain wrapped around them tighter, binding them mid-flight. They hung there for a heartbeat of frozen time, pinned by their own inertia, suspended and useless, wings thrashing wide enough in panic to shake dust and ash from the chaotic descent, achieving absolutely nothing but noise and debris. Their vaunted speed, so impressive a second ago, had turned them into dangling ornaments once entangled. Perfect dimensional anchors for Kelly.

  With two of the nearest angels incapacitated—exactly as she’d planned—Kelly jumped into her shadow, a partially blunted chainblade still lodged in the undead anchors thrashing outside, and disappeared into the fold without a trace.

  She hoped the chain would hold long enough for the impact to finish the job. If it didn’t, well—she’d be stuck in her shadow dimension without a tether, perhaps permanently, conducting the first shadow entrapment study in recorded history.

  In the darkness of her shadow space, kill confirmations came in the form of rewards.

  [Elite Title: ‘Angel Killer (I)’ gained!]

  [Title : Giantbane Grade III → IV]

  [Title - Angel Killer (Elite, I-Grade): Killed four angelic beings at least four sub-Ranks higher than the title bearer in a single blow. When facing angelic or holy beings, all attacks deal slight demonic energy damage; antithetical and poisonous to holy energy. While equipped, this title will mark you as an enemy of the divine and ally of the demonic to any member of each group within your immediate vicinity.]

  She killed Four? How did that work? Maybe the two she'd entangled had grabbed others in some awkward mid-air wrestling match before impact. Nice, she'd take it. She read the title again, slower, gleaning the clues it held.

  Demonic mana. Holy mana. Demonic beings. Divine beings. Newfangled energy types and potentially, new races. Equipping the Angel Killer Title was confirmation that killing four higher-level angels in one strike would make her a target for anything divine and a tool for anything demonic, which meant if she used it, both groups would know exactly where she stood the moment she arrived.

  Kelly wondered why the system still classified zombies as angels. They shambled and groaned, still trying to chew faces; none of that hinted at holiness. Perhaps they were supposed to glow? Who knew. There had to be some other element she was unaware of. For all she knew, angels could bounce back from zombification with a quick scrub.

  She had nothing solid to work with, so she dug through mythology. That ended quickly. Across every culture that ever produced a spooky myth—Faust, the devil, Beelzebub—demons ran soul business and infernal paperwork. Their talent was convincing unlucky humans to sign disastrous deals, like trading their souls for a faster horse. Their primary talent involved provoking divine beings who probably had better uses for their time.

  They hated each other, and the title provided Demonic Mana—whatever that meant—which now came bundled with her hits. Holy beings wouldn’t enjoy it: a slow, toxic pain under the ribs. Slight, yes, but poison could kill if you had time. She’d experiment with it later.

  [Title : Giantbane Grade IV→ V]

  [Additional Effect: Grants a 200% increase in speed when engaging an opponent of a higher Rank, every subsequent Rank difference grants an additional 15% speed increase, capped at 300%.]

  Grade Five was a shattered wall that hit her like a ton of bricks. It always did. Only showed up when she pulled off something so impossible reality vetoed. Kelly shook out the tingling burn in her limbs.

  The Giantbane upgrade was a clear reward for going after enemies far stronger than she was, where a six sub-Rank gap meant instant death, and the speed increase changed nothing except how fast she got there. Neat.

  Satisfied, Kelly waited in the darkness for the flying men and undead to kill each other.

  After a few minutes of waiting in the darkness of her pocket realm and wondering which side would win the fight on the other side, and concluding that the local church would have to update its pamphlets either way, she emerged from her shadow into the real world and saw a street torn apart by impact.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She returned into a warzone.

  Flying combatants moved fast through the street, both human and reanimated corpses, weapons and limbs firing and swinging as they passed. Ground combatants moved faster than vehicles, tearing across the street in bursts, ripping through walls or flipping wrecks to kill anything behind them.

  Corpses littered the area, falling from the sky, with more added each second, crushed or split or halfway through both. And the most peculiar of all—something she hadn’t noticed before but now found impossible to miss—was a large metallic console of sorts in the distance, surrounded by rubble and destruction a few blocks away, that towered above it all.

  It was a strange thing that blazed in her vision, shaped without elegance, technology, or human design, surging with enough mana and energy to spike her augmented ocular feed like a signal flare.

  It was so bright to Kelly’s new energy-reading lenses that she had to look away, just in time to see a group of armored human warriors moving on foot in tight formation, shifting through the less intense parts of the wreckage as corpses fell from the sky, stepping between the limbs of defeated undead and smashing anything still intact enough to twitch or stand.

  A few of them looked like soldiers, wearing camo with American flags fixed to their shoulders. Others raced around in corporate militia gear, some in Vaughn black, their oversized Vs stamped across the pectorals, and the Genecorps ones had their helix front and center, polished and smug. Kelly was briefly confused.

  That diverse lineup of unfriendly factions should have triggered some kind of third skirmish or armed slapfight for first dibs on whatever that giant magic box in the center was, but the fact that everyone was still breathing and working together meant someone upstairs was holding a very long leash.

  Unless they’d suddenly decided to sing Kumbaya and Kelly had missed the memo, she could count on one hand the number of people capable of such influence—only a major government or one of the larger colonies had a leash big enough. She scanned the few men stacked with flags and medals, checking their badge counts, and spotted the person barking orders. Ugh. U.S. military.

  Their captain looked built to block exits—or punch through walls if needed—and walked as if the floor should move for him. He stood taller than the partially destroyed truck behind him, with shoulders that looked as if they’d been designed by someone trying to win an arms race against buildings. His fists matched the full size of her head and moved as if they’d tested that comparison more than once, one fist blurring as it struck a passing figure clean out of the air. Biomechanical joints ran down both arms and linked into reinforced strips bolted along his spine, which clicked into place as he aimed and fired—either by design or from battle damage. A brace wrapped around his neck, humming with each step as posture turned into a weapon.

  Some of the bulk came from actual mass—altered genetics, maybe. The rest came from parts that didn’t believe in subtlety. Kelly’s scan read 26.7 EQ, mostly dumped into perception. That was the part she found funniest. Why perception? A man with fists that could pulp a turret had spent a fortune upgrading his attention span. Maybe he’d just paid top-tier rates to watch things die in high resolution?

  As she emerged, he immediately locked onto her like a searchlight and walked toward her without signaling his squad. Displaced air followed him like a fan club.

  "Who are you?"

  His trigger finger twitched as he appeared before her in a flash of movement, and his steps faltered with suspicion as he immediately read her latest Enhancement score—well above civilian grade. “8.6? Why are you here? Nobody’s reported a survivor from the impact zone.” He looked her up again. “How’d you get through the fallout? This crater has seven different heat signatures still rising. There’s been no border movement on entry logs, no life signals in the nearby buildings.”

  He paused as if reading details, then kept moving—probably after spotting the Genecorp clearance buried in the EQ signature and deciding whoever backed her outranked his curiosity.

  “Genecorp sanctioned? Hmm. Something’s interfering with our comms—secure lines are down, only web and satellite left—so you’re going to have to come with us until we confirm you’re someone useful,” the captain barked with timbred authority as his squad moved to surround Kelly, guiding and guarding her as they cleaned up the fallen from the battle raging around them.

  Another large soldier cut in from behind him, blasting a struggling corpse at point-blank range before looking up. “She’s sanctioned, right? Genecorp? Maybe she’s one of theirs!” he yelled, pivoting. “Senator Friedman mentioned a research team would be inbound to extract the artifact.”

  The captain didn’t look convinced. “Then why’s she here without an escort? The suit’s researchers are too cowardly to go into hot zones alone. Not unless those bloodbags finally ran out of clipboards and grew spines. She should be at an evac bunker or whatever’s left of the Hyperloop stations.”

  He tilted his head slightly toward her, voice lower now. “So what are you—messenger, researcher, or bait?”

  Kelly remained silent, her eyes peeled on the chaotic war erupting around the formation. “Well, I am a scientist,” she acquiesced, allowing them a tertiary glance at her Vaughn credentials; just enough to see who she worked for, her division, and her name, but not much else.

  “Wait—a scientist?” He checked her posture, scanned her credentials, then glanced back at his men. “You’re with Vaughn? I didn’t realize you Vaughn dogs would send noncombatants to the field so soon. You might be field bait.” He laughed, adjusting a shield that sprang from his forearm to defend against a diving undead before promptly snatching it from the air in a flash of movement and shooting the downed corpse until it could no longer move.

  “I’ll need to check with command once the box stops jamming our secure lines, but with that rating, you shouldn’t even be on-planet. You saw the stampede, right?”

  Kelly nodded with tentative guilt. She really needed to figure out how to raid Reggie’s crew for Deadtech without triggering a monster stampede and destroying a section of the city.

  The captain fired into the distance, then continued, “It was madness—as if something possessed every creature within a mile. It broke all our containments. Some buildings near the center are still under siege. Genecorp HQ’s gone—wrecked from the inside. They say it was the target of the stampede, and some maniac inside started cutting through the floors while the rest of us were busy, then scrubbed the footage!” he yelled through the sound of death and gunfire.

  Kelly wasn’t surprised that Genecorp hadn’t reported her to the authorities. That meant they had plans for her and didn’t want to share the rewards. Naturally, she planned to ruin their plans in the best way possible.

  The captain reloaded in a blur before sparing her a glance, oblivious to Kelly’s thoughts. “So you’re here for the box. Is it true what they say about them?” he asked curiously, his eyes eager and his voice low but direct, jerking his head toward the alien structure spewing insanely dense, vibrant mana into the atmosphere. “We know the magic-portal freaks are planting these boxes all over the globe. Lab geeks think it means things are gonna get worse; that they’re terraforming, and even deadlier creatures are coming!” He looked equally concerned and excited. “Maybe there’ll be another interspecies war!”

  At his words, Kelly was already adding “fit the magical alien terraforming structure into shadow space” to her to-do list, right after breaking into the botanical lab.

  She had read about them online but had never seen one for herself. Aside from the magic staffs and the basic-ass pre-technology weapons some of the more dangerous monsters sometimes carried, the boxes were the first real pieces of portal technology to land, and from the reports, they powered themselves without any biological input.

  Unless there was a little gnome or something equally ridiculous inside them, they were exactly what humanity needed. Whenever they appeared, the whole world’s internet—all the worlds—went crazy with greed. If everyone with a pulse was curious about the magical terraforming structures, even off-worlders, why shouldn’t she have one of her own?

  “I hate to break it to you,” Kelly said, thumbing toward the alien structure rising behind them, where the air crackled around streams of densely packed, highly saturated mana curling off the surface like a slow gas leak from hell. “But you’re way off. I didn’t come here to help you figure out how to worship the magic box.” Her voice stayed even, unconcerned by the threat he posed. She had Reggie’s crew’s Deadqueen tech, after all—all three pieces. Whatever he was capable of didn’t matter if it passed right through her. And best of all, she would see it coming.

  Kelly pointed again at the structure dumping mana into the sky in thick columns that twisted on the way up. “I’m not your researcher, and I’m not here to help you collect that thing either.” She rested her hand back on her hip, one boot scraping the dust.

  “I destroyed Genecorp’s headquarters while the heavy hitters were away. Seventy floors, top to bottom.” She scratched the side of her jaw as if checking the math. “I didn’t even do anything, and they kept trying to kill me. Can you believe that?” She raised both palms to the sky in genuine frustration. “Everyone who pointed a weapon at me first died trying. The stampede happened right after, so the whole thing’s probably a pile of scrap now.” She paused as if still calculating. “All of it was self-defense, obviously—I checked.” Her eyes lifted to the serpent drifting over the city, its coils already casting lines across the skyline.

  “I’m here to stop the invasion. That thing up there,” she gestured at the sky, where the serpent had finally begun to emerge, slow and visible, “is going to eat this city in a few hours. And when it does, everything still breathing will be dead, including you—probably… no, definitely.” Her eyes continued to track the horizon, then returned squarely to meet his.

  “If you’re planning anything, now’s your chance to make it entertaining.”