The air around Astra began to boil.
It was not the heat of fire — it was the "cold boiling" of collapsing reality itself. Lira, pressed against the shattered remains of a wall, watched as the space around the girl fractured like broken glass. The cracks spread in violet lines, and through them, absolute void peeked through — the Abyss that had finally been given permission to emerge.
Astra was no longer running.
She was walking.
Straight toward "Sector-Zero" — the interrogation and reset facility, the most fortified stronghold of the Corporation in this region. A monolith of black composite embedded into the city's foundation rock, rising like a giant obsidian tooth. There were no windows, only rows of automated turrets, heavy plasma barriers, and gates designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike.
To the Astra who was walking across the wide bridge ahead, those gates no longer existed.
"STOP!" the AI defense system thundered, amplified through thousands of speakers. "IMMEDIATE HALT! LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED!"
A dozen heavy turrets rotated in unison. Their barrels ignited, and in the next instant, the bridge was swallowed in a storm of fire. Thousands of rounds per second, plasma bursts, electromagnetic discharges — everything designed to reduce any living being into a mist of blood and scorched fragments.
Astra didn't even raise her hands.
She just kept walking.
Behind her, the shadow of Thanatos unfurled like a massive cloak of living darkness. Violet veins pulsed through it like arteries. Every bullet, every plasma discharge that touched the haze lost speed, structure, and even the idea of existence itself. They turned into gray ash, falling harmlessly like dust.
"My turn," Astra whispered.
Her voice was quiet, but it echoed across the entire bridge, as if the Abyss itself had spoken.
She paused for a moment… and stomped her foot.
A wave of violet flame surged forward. It was not fire in any conventional sense. It did not burn — it erased. Matter simply ceased to exist. The steel bridge beneath her disintegrated in sections, leaving behind perfectly smooth, mirror-polished voids with razor-clean edges. Turrets, plasma barriers, and the massive gates of the base dissolved into cold violet light, as if they had never existed at all.
Astra stepped inside the base through the newly carved absence.
Inside, chaos reigned.
Guards and internal enforcers in black armor fired wildly with energy rifles. Red plasma beams and blue neural-disruption pulses filled the corridors. But Astra walked through them like a ghost.
Those she touched collapsed to their knees. Their skin turned gray and dry, as if life itself had been siphoned out in an instant. Eyes went hollow. Bodies slackened. Thanatos feasted — drinking their Sparks down to the last drop, leaving only empty shells behind.
One senior officer at the central console attempted to activate the base's self-destruct protocol. His fingers barely reached the panel when Astra looked at him.
Just looked.
The officer froze. A short, strangled gasp escaped his mouth. Then his body began to disintegrate — skin first, then muscle, then bone — all turning into violet ash that slowly drifted to the floor.
Astra continued walking through the corridors of "Sector-Zero," leaving behind a trail of empty armor and gray dust.
Deep inside the facility, within one of the reset chambers, Kai was still alive.
And she was coming for him.
The cold flame of the Abyss no longer hid itself.
It had finally found its target.
Lira, still outside at the edge of the breach, watched what was unfolding within and whispered softly:
"Astra… please… don't lose yourself completely…"
But Astra could no longer hear her.
She could hear only one voice — Thanatos, now resonating in perfect sync with her own heartbeat.
"Go, little spark.
Take back your hacker.
And then… we will burn everything else."