The sky did not crack again.
It tore.
The massive silver eye widened inside the rift above the Tower, and the clouds were pulled inward as if gravity itself had reversed direction. The entire skyline trembled under pressure that no human structure was built to withstand. Windows shattered across the city without impact. Car alarms screamed. Sirens failed. Power grids flickered and died in sections.
Arav stood in the center of the ruined financial district, breathing hard, golden lines glowing across his arm.
The colossal armored limb pushed further through the rift. It was larger than any skyscraper in sight. Segmented plating layered over something that did not look mechanical and did not look biological either. It moved slowly, but every centimeter it advanced bent the atmosphere around it.
System alerts flooded his vision.
[Final Correction Tier: Colossus-Class]
[Authority Level: Catastrophic]
[Deviation: 33.8%]
[Survival Probability: 9%]
Dante staggered beside him, face pale but eyes burning. Mira stood to his left, gravity field flickering unstably around her.
Foreign awakeners were retreating. Jets pulled away. Military command vehicles reversed at full speed.
The colossal entity did not rush.
It descended like inevitability.
The massive eye shifted slightly.
Locked.
On him.
A thin beam of white light formed at the center of the eye.
Not large.
Not wide.
Focused.
Precision strike.
Arav reacted instantly.
He activated Chrono Mark.
Time slowed.
The beam was already forming trajectory lines across the city.
If it fired normally, it would erase five city blocks.
He didn't hesitate.
He activated his new ability.
[Time Anchor Lock — Activated]
The world stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
Dust froze mid-air.
Mira's gravity distortion froze in ripple form.
Dante's flame particles hung like suspended sparks.
The beam inside the eye froze half-formed.
Five seconds.
He felt the cost instantly.
His veins burned like liquid metal.
HP ticked downward slowly even in frozen time.
He ran.
He sprinted across frozen debris toward the beam's projected impact zone.
He calculated quickly.
He couldn't stop the beam.
But he could redirect its origin alignment.
He leapt upward, running along a half-collapsed building façade.
Reached the frozen beam core in the sky's lower distortion layer.
He slammed his authority-infused hand into the beam's forming channel.
It resisted.
Hard.
He pushed anyway.
Three seconds left.
Two.
He forced the trajectory upward by inches.
One second.
Time resumed.
The beam fired.
Instead of carving through the city—
It shot upward at an angle.
Piercing clouds.
Exploding far above in a blinding detonation.
The shockwave still flattened buildings for blocks.
But the city center survived.
The colossal entity reacted.
Its eye narrowed slightly.
It adjusted its descent speed.
Faster now.
The armored limb forced itself further through the rift.
The tear widened under pressure.
The Tower pulsed violently beneath it.
Dante grabbed Arav's shoulder. "You just froze everything."
"Yes."
"You can do that again?"
"Not soon."
Cooldown flashed brutally long.
[Time Anchor Lock — Cooldown: Severe]
Mira exhaled slowly. "Then we stall."
The colossal entity's second limb began emerging.
Two massive arms now gripping the rift's edges.
Reality stretched thin around them.
System warning flared again.
[Structural Integrity of Local Reality: Failing]
Foreign awakeners regrouped at perimeter.
High-tier units formed combined arrays.
Energy cannons charged.
Ice artillery units aimed skyward.
Lightning clusters formed above rooftops.
The first combined strike launched.
Hundreds of coordinated attacks converged on the colossal limb.
The impacts lit the sky in overlapping explosions.
For three seconds, the limb was obscured in fire and lightning.
When the smoke cleared—
The plating was scratched.
Nothing more.
The colossal entity pulled harder.
The rift tore wider.
Its torso began pushing through.
Arav felt the pressure increase.
Not physical weight.
Existential compression.
His knees almost buckled.
Mira forced gravity upward in counterpressure.
Dante reignited Solar Core at maximum capacity.
They moved simultaneously without speaking.
Arav sprinted toward the Tower base.
He knew the pattern now.
The Colossus wasn't anchored in open sky.
It was anchored to the Tower.
Break the anchor—
Slow descent.
He activated Chrono Mark.
Time slowed.
He scanned the Tower's base structure.
The pulse pattern had changed.
Three core conduits extending upward into the rift.
Feeding authority into the Colossus.
He resumed time.
"Three anchors!" he shouted.
Dante shot toward the left conduit.
Mira launched toward the right.
Arav took the center.
He ran straight into the Tower's base perimeter.
The ground here warped constantly.
Reality unstable.
He jumped over splitting asphalt and slammed his blade into the glowing central conduit.
Authority surged outward violently.
The conduit resisted.
Harder than any Executor core.
He activated Anchor Point on the conduit itself.
Stabilized its current structural weakness.
Golden energy locked the crack.
Dante's flames struck the left conduit simultaneously.
Mira compressed gravity into a singularity spike on the right.
All three conduits flickered at once.
The colossal torso paused mid-descent.
The eye widened slightly.
Pressure in the city dropped by a fraction.
Not enough.
The Colossus roared.
The sound wasn't audio.
It was distortion.
Buildings shook.
Glass liquified.
Arav's HP dropped slightly from environmental authority pressure.
[HP: 81% → 74%]
The central conduit began regenerating.
Adaptive structure.
Of course.
He needed overload.
He forced authority fragment integration again.
Golden veins flared brighter across his arm.
He drove both hands into the conduit.
Pain exploded.
His vision blurred.
System alarms screamed.
[Authority Conflict — Severe]
Dante roared and increased output.
Mira screamed as she forced gravity beyond safe limit.
The three conduits cracked further.
The Colossus's torso halted fully.
The rift trembled violently.
For the first time—
The colossal entity's descent stopped.
Foreign awakeners saw the shift and increased bombardment.
Missiles struck continuously.
Energy cannons fired in synchronized waves.
The Colossus reacted.
It released one arm from the rift.
That single arm swung downward toward the Tower.
Arav saw it coming.
He activated Chrono Mark.
Time slowed.
The descending limb would crush the Tower base entirely.
And everyone near it.
He couldn't stop the limb directly.
Too large.
Too powerful.
He needed redirection again.
He sprinted toward the limb's projected impact zone.
Climbed debris.
Leapt.
He activated Anchor Point in mid-air—
Not on himself—
On the limb's surface plating.
Golden energy spread outward in a circular patch.
The limb's trajectory slowed slightly.
He used the remaining seconds to shift position along its arc.
Time resumed.
The limb crashed downward—
But instead of directly on the Tower—
It slammed into adjacent high-rise structures.
Three skyscrapers collapsed instantly.
Dust swallowed half the district.
The Tower survived.
Barely.
Arav hit the ground hard from shockwave.
[HP: 74% → 52%]
He forced himself up again.
The limb pulled back slowly.
The Colossus roared again.
More of its torso pushed through the rift.
The silver eye now fully visible above the skyline.
The rift widened further.
Deviation counter climbed.
[Deviation: 37.9%]
Too fast.
Way too fast.
Dante staggered, breathing heavily. "We can't hold this."
"We don't hold it," Arav replied.
"We sever it."
Mira's eyes flickered toward him. "The rift itself."
Yes.
Not the limb.
Not the Tower.
The rift.
He activated Chrono Mark again.
Time slowed.
He analyzed the rift edges.
There.
At four equidistant points—
Stability anchors.
Invisible in normal time.
Time resumed.
"Four anchor points around the tear!"
Foreign awakeners heard him through open channels.
Three international high-rank units moved instantly to three visible distortion points.
Arav took the fourth.
He sprinted across collapsing rooftops.
Leapt.
Climbed shattered debris.
Reached the distortion anchor.
He drove his blade into it.
Authority exploded outward.
The anchor resisted violently.
The Colossus reacted immediately.
It shifted both arms toward the anchor points.
Trying to defend.
Dante intercepted one descending strike with a suicidal flame burst.
Mira forced gravity around another anchor, slowing its collapse.
Foreign awakeners poured everything they had into the remaining points.
Arav activated Anchor Point on the distortion node itself.
Stabilized its crack.
Then pulled.
The rift trembled violently.
The sky darkened further.
The silver eye widened fully now.
The Colossus roared again.
One of the foreign anchors collapsed.
Its node regenerated.
Three remained.
Not enough.
Arav gritted his teeth.
He activated Time Anchor Lock again—
Ignoring cooldown risk.
System screamed warnings.
Time froze.
Everything stopped again.
His body felt heavier this time.
HP draining rapidly even in frozen state.
He ran along the rift edge.
From one anchor to the next.
He slammed authority into each stability point manually.
Cracked them further.
One.
Two.
Three.
Time resumed.
The rift convulsed violently.
All three damaged anchors fractured simultaneously.
The tear shrank by meters.
The colossal torso was forced upward slightly.
The silver eye flickered.
But the fourth anchor regenerated fully.
The rift stabilized again.
The Colossus pushed harder.
The descent resumed.
Arav staggered.
HP dangerously low.
[HP: 52% → 31%]
He couldn't freeze time again.
Not immediately.
Dante was barely standing.
Mira bleeding from both ears.
Foreign awakeners collapsing from mana exhaustion.
The Colossus was halfway through now.
Half its upper body visible above the skyline.
And then—
The Tower pulsed differently.
Not hostile.
Not aggressive.
Different.
The rift flickered unpredictably.
The Colossus paused.
The silver eye shifted away from Arav for the first time.
Looked downward.
At the Tower itself.
The ground around the Tower cracked.
Not from the Colossus.
From below.
A new distortion formed at the Tower base.
System glitch exploded across Arav's vision.
[Unauthorized Intervention Detected]
The Colossus halted its descent momentarily.
The rift trembled.
Something else was moving.
Not from above.
From inside the Tower.
The silver eye narrowed.
The Colossus retracted one arm slightly.
Not retreat.
Recalculation.
Arav stared at the Tower.
The base cracked open.
Golden-white light surged upward from within.
Not black authority.
Not white distortion.
Different.
The Colossus roared again.
But this time—
It wasn't alone.
Something from inside the Tower was pushing upward toward the rift.
The sky trembled violently.
The rift destabilized unpredictably.
The Colossus's torso jerked sideways slightly.
Arav exhaled slowly despite burning lungs.
New variable.
New player.
The rift shook harder.
The silver eye flickered.
And from within the Tower—
A massive golden construct began rising.
Not fully visible yet.
But massive.
And powerful.
The Colossus halted fully now.
Its attention divided.
The city below stood frozen in fear.
Two colossal forces converging.
One descending from above.
One rising from within the Tower.
And Arav—
Caught between them.
System message flickered faintly.
[Conflict Escalation: Beyond Expected Parameters]
The golden construct rose higher.
The Colossus roared.
The rift expanded violently again.
And both forces prepared to collide.