(Marvel, DC, and all other intellectual properties referenced in this story, including images, manga, manhwa, and anime, belong to their respective owners. The main character, Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez, and this story's original elements belong to me.)
Beep… Beep… Beep…
Adriel knew that sound.
A heart monitor. The steady electronic rhythm he associated with hospital rooms and waiting for someone to tell him whether everything would be all right.
Nobody had explained why they had brought him here.
He had asked, but the grim faces around him made him hesitate to ask again.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
He followed his family down the corridor, watching his father's back.
Hospitals had always made him uneasy. Even when he knew someone was only there for treatment, he could never quite shake the possibility that something might go wrong.
Today, nobody was trying to reassure him.
They stopped outside a room.
His father reached for the door.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
His grandmother lay in the bed.
For a moment, Adriel remained in the doorway.
She looked so much smaller than he remembered. Pillows supported her upper body, and oxygen tubing rested beneath her nose. Lines ran from her arms to the equipment beside the bed. Even asleep, she seemed to be working for each breath.
His eyes moved between her face and the monitor.
Then back to her face.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
Something tightened painfully in his chest.
He had always known he would not have her forever. She was ninety-five. Of course he knew.
But whenever he thought about losing her, it belonged to some distant day he still had time to prepare for.
Seeing her like this made that impossible.
He wanted her to open her eyes. To recognize him and say something familiar. Anything that would make this room feel less frightening.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
"Doctor…"
His father's voice drew his attention.
Tears were already slipping down his cheeks.
"Is there really nothing else you can do?"
The doctor lowered his voice.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Valdez. The pulmonary edema has worsened. We've given her medication to reduce the fluid in her lungs and supported her breathing, but her oxygen levels are still difficult to maintain."
His father listened without moving.
"She's very frail," the doctor continued. "And she isn't responding to treatment the way we'd hoped. I'm afraid she may not recover."
Adriel stared at him.
The words were clear enough. He understood every one of them.
He still waited for the doctor to say something else.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
"I see…"
His father tried to continue, but his voice broke.
He covered his mouth and nodded.
"I understand."
The doctor gave him a moment.
"I would encourage you to spend time with her. We'll keep treating her and do everything we can to keep her comfortable."
He stepped outside, leaving the family together.
More relatives arrived from his father's side. Some were people Adriel had not seen in a long time, their visits made infrequent by the distance between them.
They gathered around the bed, speaking softly.
Eventually, his grandmother stirred.
Her eyelids lifted slowly. She looked at the faces surrounding her, and a tired smile appeared.
Someone took her hand.
Someone else leaned closer so she could hear them.
She seemed so happy to see everyone. Despite the effort it took to breathe, she kept looking around, making sure she had seen each person who had come.
Then her gaze found Adriel.
Her smile widened.
"My dear boy…"
Her voice was weak. She paused to catch her breath, her eyes shining.
"You've gotten so handsome."
Another small breath.
"And so tall…"
Adriel's vision blurred.
He moved to her bedside and bent down, wrapping his arms around her as carefully as he could. He wanted to hold her tighter, but the tubing and the frailty of her body made him afraid to.
Her hand settled against his back.
"Grandma…"
His voice caught.
"I've missed you."
And then he woke up.
GASP!
The hospital room vanished.
Adriel dragged in a breath, and pain tore through his chest.
For a moment, he remained hunched over, one hand pressed against the pale surface beneath him. His grandmother's voice lingered in his ears. He could almost feel her hand resting against his back.
Then he coughed blood onto an unfinished paragraph.
A blue hyperlink flickered beneath his fingers.
He was lying on a wiki page.
Or, more accurately, a section of one that had not finished uploading before he crashed through it.
The article stretched across a floating slab of white, its text ending halfway through a sentence. Beyond that unfinished edge lay the Bridge's endless currents of incoming information.
Somewhere in the real world, a person was probably staring at an error message and wondering what the hell they had done wrong.
Adriel swallowed, tasting blood.
He could not have been unconscious for more than a second.
It had felt longer.
He pushed himself onto one knee. The movement pulled at wounds across his abdomen, and he stopped long enough to steady his breathing before trying again.
His regeneration still refused to cooperate.
"Of course."
He touched his cheek.
The torn edges shifted beneath his fingertips.
Adriel immediately withdrew his hand.
He did not need to see it.
Unfortunately, he remembered exactly how it had happened. He remembered Anansi's fingers inside his mouth, the pull against his cheek, and his own decision to keep moving forward.
He remembered laughing.
That part made his stomach tighten more than the wound did.
Whatever the system had done to bring him back, it had left him with every second of that experience.
He stood.
Around him, the Bridge looked worse than before.
Broken models drifted through interrupted upload streams. Fragments of buildings rotated without their surrounding environments, while stretches of incoming information disappeared into pale gaps that had not been there earlier.
Something moved inside one of those gaps.
Adriel's eyes narrowed.
There were other presences scattered throughout the damaged layer. Strange ones. Some drifted with the information currents; others moved against them.
He had not sensed them before.
For now, none seemed interested in him.
Fine.
He already had enough shit to deal with.
A column of cosmic energy erupted in the distance.
The surrounding data streams bent away from it. Unfinished structures tumbled through the white expanse as a scream carried across the Bridge.
"GUARDIAN!"
Adriel slowly turned.
"I WILL CUT YOU DOWN! TEAR YOU APART! SPLAY THE GORE OF YOUR PROFANE FORM ACROSS FICTION!"
The column widened.
Adriel raised an arm across his face as loose fragments battered the wiki page.
"I WILL GRIND YOU DOWN UNTIL THE VERY STORY CRIES FOR MERCY! MY HANDS SHALL RELISH ENDING YOU! HERE! AND! NOW!"
Adriel braced against the pressure.
"Cope and seethe," he muttered.
Anansi appeared directly in front of him.
"I FUCKING AM!"
His foot drove into Adriel's sternum.
"OOF!"
The wiki page broke beneath them.
Adriel flew backward through a row of floating rectangular polygons. Each collision folded another unfinished surface around his body before he burst through it.
Toxin surged down his right arm.
His hand widened into a hooked anchor, which he drove through the edge of a passing structure.
The hook caught.
His shoulder nearly tore from its socket as his body swung beneath it, but he stopped himself before he could plunge into the information current below.
Above him, Anansi swept an arm downward.
A crescent of cosmic energy cut through the intervening debris.
Adriel released the anchor and thrust his other hand forward. Matter gathered across his palm, compressed into a curved edge, and shot upward to meet it.
The attacks collided.
A white flash swallowed the space between them.
Anansi emerged from it at Adriel's side, already turning into a high kick.
Adriel dropped beneath the heel.
Toxin hardened around his fist.
He smashed the resulting hammer into Anansi's supporting shin.
The Spider God's leg buckled.
Before he could recover, Adriel caught the back of his head and pulled him into a rising knee.
Golden blood sprayed across his thigh.
He drove his knee upward again.
Anansi caught it against his forearm.
The third struck the same guard.
Then the God's free hand slipped beneath Adriel's raised elbow.
A sphere of light pressed against his lower ribs.
Adriel's eyes widened.
The blast launched him upward.
His body folded around the impact before he tore through the underside of an unfinished building, scattering its hollow floors across the Bridge.
He emerged above it, coughing, with one arm clamped against his side.
Anansi followed.
Adriel saw the shoulder turn before the fist came.
He caught the punch against both forearms.
The impact drove him backward.
It hurt like hell.
But his guard held.
Anansi no longer had those stolen cosmologies reinforcing him.
And Adriel no longer had that temporary power letting him laugh through everything the God threw at him.
He needed to remember both.
Anansi struck again.
Adriel slipped outside the punch and drove a short elbow across his mouth. The God's head turned, but his hand caught Adriel behind the neck before he could pull away.
He dragged him downward.
A knee buried itself in Adriel's ribs.
Something shifted beneath the symbiote.
Anansi pulled him in for another.
Adriel planted a palm against the rising thigh, vaulted over the God's shoulder, and twisted as he passed. His heel struck the back of Anansi's head.
The grip on his neck broke.
He landed on a floating platform barely wide enough for either of them.
Anansi touched down opposite him.
Neither waited.
Adriel stepped in behind a straight punch, drew Anansi's guard upward, and kicked at the leg he had already struck.
Anansi lifted it out of reach.
His other foot whipped toward Adriel's temple.
Adriel leaned back.
The heel passed close enough to disturb his hair.
He came forward with a punch aimed beneath the ribs, but Anansi trapped the arm against his side and drove his forehead into Adriel's face.
Pain burst through his nose.
Before he could regain his footing, Anansi turned and hurled him over his hip.
Adriel struck the platform on his back.
It shattered.
Anansi followed him through the falling pieces, one knee aimed at his chest.
Adriel rolled across a fragment and pushed away.
The knee punched through where he had been.
He caught Anansi's wrist as the God rose, stepped across his body, and drove a shoulder into his sternum. For an instant, he had the arm stretched straight between them.
He tried to break it.
Anansi turned with the pressure.
A stinger slid from his free forearm.
Adriel released him just before it passed through his throat.
The point opened a red line beneath his jaw instead.
He stumbled back, one hand rising instinctively.
Anansi saw it.
His next punch drove straight into Adriel's exposed stomach.
The Guardian doubled over.
A second blow caught him across the torn cheek.
Blood splashed between them.
Adriel staggered, nearly losing his balance, and Anansi surged forward to finish the combination.
Toxin snapped from Adriel's wrist.
The strand caught the God's advancing ankle.
Adriel pulled.
Anansi's foot slid out from beneath him.
The Guardian met his falling body with a rising palm beneath the chin, blue electricity discharging through the contact.
The God shot upward.
Adriel followed with both hands crackling.
"Venom—"
Anansi's palm struck his chest before he could finish.
Cosmic energy detonated between them.
Adriel tumbled into a lattice of unfinished support beams.
Metal bent around his back.
He hung there for a fraction of a second, stunned, before his senses screamed.
He dropped.
Anansi's stinger punched through the space his head had occupied and buried itself in a beam.
Adriel seized the metal with both hands.
Electricity raced through it.
Anansi snarled as the discharge climbed his embedded weapon and burst across his arm.
Adriel kicked him beneath the ribs, freed himself from the framework, and caught the beam before it could drift away.
Magnetism twisted the surrounding supports inward.
Metal wrapped around Anansi's torso.
Adriel pulled everything tight.
Then he drove a fist into the trapped God's face.
The first blow broke his nose.
The second struck his raised forearm.
Before the third connected, Anansi tore the framework apart.
A jagged length of metal swept across Adriel's shoulder, cutting through Toxin and the flesh beneath it.
His arm dropped.
Anansi caught him by the face.
He accelerated.
They plowed through a suspended wall, burst across an unfinished corridor, and crashed into a broad stretch of exposed wireframe terrain.
Anansi kept driving him backward.
Adriel's heels carved trenches through the mesh.
He could feel the God's fingers pressing against his eyes.
Toxin spread over his face, forcing itself between the fingertips and his skin.
Adriel caught Anansi's wrist with his good hand.
His injured arm moved despite the pain.
He drove two fingers beneath the God's elbow, forced the joint upward, and turned out of the grip.
Anansi's hand scraped across his face as it came loose.
Adriel stepped behind him.
His heel slammed into the back of the God's knee.
As Anansi dropped, Adriel turned through the movement and drove a kick into the side of his head.
The God struck the wireframe on one shoulder.
Adriel brought his heel down.
Anansi rolled.
The kick punched through the terrain.
A cosmic web caught Adriel across the chest.
It tightened before he could tear it away.
Anansi yanked him forward, caught his approaching face against an elbow, and spun him into the ground.
The mesh buckled beneath his body.
For an instant, Adriel could not see anything.
His ears rang.
He knew that sound too fucking well.
Anansi hauled him upward by the web.
Adriel forced his eyes open.
The God's fist filled his vision.
He turned just enough for it to glance across his brow.
Then he stepped into Anansi's space.
Too close for the next punch to fully extend.
Adriel drove his forehead against the God's broken nose.
Anansi recoiled.
The Guardian stayed with him, punching beneath one elbow, then the other. He caught the God behind the neck and pulled him into a knee before shoving him away.
His injured shoulder screamed.
Blood ran from his sleeve and dripped off his fingers.
Anansi looked little better.
Golden blood coated his mouth. One side of his face had begun to swell, and he favored the leg Adriel had struck earlier.
Good.
He could work with that.
The Spider God spat onto the mesh.
"You should have stayed dead."
Adriel wiped blood away from his eye.
"Yeah. Well. You should've shut the fuck up."
Anansi disappeared.
Adriel turned toward the warning in his skull.
A fist caught his guard and drove him sideways.
Another portal opened before he could stop.
Anansi came through it with a kick.
Adriel caught the heel against his forearm, but the force lifted him off the terrain.
The God teleported again.
This time, Adriel did not chase his presence.
He watched the space opening beside him.
His interface flickered into view.
The edge of the portal stretched under a sharp movement of his fingers.
Anansi emerged a fraction lower than he intended.
His punch passed beneath Adriel's chin.
The Guardian caught his extended arm, planted a foot against his hip, and fell backward.
He carried Anansi over him.
Both bodies went through the altered opening.
The God struck a floating slab of unfinished terrain back-first.
Adriel landed on him.
His fist came down.
Anansi moved his head.
The blow buried itself beside his ear.
The God drove a thumb into Adriel's wounded shoulder.
Adriel cried out.
Anansi rolled them over, pinned his injured arm beneath a knee, and raised a hand full of cosmic light.
Adriel caught the wrist.
The sphere descended.
His other hand joined the first.
Light burned against the symbiote covering his palms.
Beneath them, the terrain began peeling apart.
Anansi leaned into the struggle, teeth bared.
Adriel's arms shook.
He could not keep this up.
He stopped trying to push the hand away.
Instead, he dragged it sideways.
The blast discharged past his head.
It tore through the slab and carved a blazing channel across the surrounding structures.
Adriel hooked a leg around Anansi's waist.
He turned his hips, pulled the God's wrist across his body, and threw him into the path of the collapsing terrain.
Both fell through.
Fragments struck their shoulders and backs.
Anansi formed a barrier around himself.
Adriel hit it feetfirst.
The shell held.
He pushed off it, flipped, and came back with one fist wrapped in dense layers of Toxin.
Electricity gathered beneath the armor.
Anansi braced.
Adriel struck the same place.
The shell fractured.
The discharge went through.
For a moment, the God's silhouette flashed inside the light.
Then the barrier burst.
Adriel emerged with him, both of them tumbling through the open Bridge.
Anansi caught his wrist.
Adriel caught his throat.
They struck each other with their free hands as incoming data streamed past them.
A punch snapped Adriel's head aside.
He answered with an elbow.
Anansi's knee struck his abdomen.
Adriel pulled him closer and drove his forehead into the God's mouth.
Neither let go.
They crashed onto a drifting block of blank terrain.
The impact flattened them against its surface.
Adriel rolled away first.
He tried to stand.
His damaged leg nearly gave way beneath him.
He had not noticed the wound until then—a deep cut across the outside of his thigh, dark blood running into his boot.
Across the platform, Anansi rose more slowly.
One hand pressed against his ribs.
Adriel inhaled through his mouth.
It did not help much.
Everything hurt.
The stolen power was gone, but Anansi was still here.
Still moving.
Still capable of killing him.
His grandmother's voice tried to surface again.
Adriel pushed a shaking hand through his hair and fixed his eyes on the enemy in front of him.
He had to get through this.
Anansi's shoulders rose with a long breath.
Cosmic energy gathered around his arms.
Adriel lowered his stance.
Blue electricity crawled over his fingers.
They moved together.
Anansi fired first.
Adriel slipped past the concentrated beam and let it tear through the terrain behind him. He closed the distance while the God's arm was still extended.
His fist struck the elbow.
Anansi turned with it and swung his other hand.
Adriel ducked beneath the punch, stepped behind the God's lead leg, and drove his shoulder into his chest.
Anansi staggered.
The Guardian turned through a kick aimed at his jaw.
The God caught it.
His fingers tightened around Adriel's ankle.
Adriel jumped off his remaining foot.
He spun with the trapped leg, bringing his free heel across Anansi's temple.
The grip loosened.
He landed badly.
Pain shot through his thigh.
Anansi struck before he could reset his stance.
A short punch drove into Adriel's ribs.
Another caught his mouth.
The Guardian retreated two steps, saw the next shoulder turn, and dropped beneath the incoming fist.
His hand became a blade.
Anansi twisted away.
The edge opened his side.
Golden blood struck the white surface.
The God's expression changed.
Adriel saw the stinger extend.
He caught the forearm against his own, drove it outward, and punched Anansi across the jaw.
Anansi answered with a headbutt.
Their foreheads collided.
Both stumbled.
Then Adriel caught a fistful of the God's clothing.
Anansi seized the front of his symbiote.
They drew back their free hands—
And stopped.
Something had changed.
Adriel felt it through the platform beneath his boots.
A vibration.
At first, he thought another damaged upload stream had broken nearby.
Then the presences arrived.
His eyes shifted past Anansi's shoulder.
Far across the Bridge, a dark opening widened between two currents of incoming information.
Figures stood beyond it.
Another passage opened beside the first.
Then more appeared across the white expanse, separated by distances Adriel could feel more clearly than he could see.
These were nothing like the strange anomalies roaming through the damaged layer.
He knew these signatures.
Darks.
Ranks of them waited beyond the openings, their different auras pressing together until the surrounding information currents began to bend.
Anansi's grip loosened.
Adriel released him and took a step back.
The Spider God turned his head.
Beyond him, the waiting formations began to move.
The first wave had arrived.
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
Inside the Nexus of Knowledge and Imagination, the preparations continued.
Ace pulled another container from a shelf and secured it with the supplies gathered at his feet. Artoria checked their restoratives before adding them to the weapons they intended to carry. Neither wanted to depend entirely on the Gamer System remaining accessible once they returned to the fight.
Nearby, pieces of Peter's new armor assembled around him. Plates settled against his torso while unfinished sections hovered beside his shoulders and arms, waiting to lock into place.
Chrona divided her attention between the process and the displays monitoring the Bridge.
Then a notification appeared.
MULTIPLE CROSSINGS DETECTED
She stopped moving.
A second line followed.
ORIGIN: DARK WEB
DESTINATION: THE BRIDGE
The display expanded before she could dismiss it.
Portals were opening throughout the region outside the Nexus. Their signatures appeared in organized groups, followed by a rising number of hostile presences.
Chrona watched the incoming count climb.
This was the invasion they had feared.
"They're here."
Her voice was quiet enough that only Peter immediately looked toward her.
Then the warning changed.
HOSTILE WAVE: ARRIVED
"Oh, no…"
Ace's hand paused over the supplies.
Artoria turned.
Chrona moved through the display, searching for somewhere she could take the Nexus. Every route she examined led toward another disturbed current, another damaged section of the Bridge, or one of the passages admitting the Darks.
There was so little room left.
"The Darks are here," she said, louder now. "An entire wave. They're entering the same region we're in."
Peter stepped away from the assembly platform.
"What can they detect?"
"I don't know yet."
That uncertainty frightened her more than she wanted to admit.
She checked another route, then abandoned it.
"It doesn't matter that the Nexus occupies a higher dimensional order. If they catch its presence, they can reach it. They can open a passage here."
Her fingers faltered against the display.
All that time spent hiding. Moving before anyone could follow. Protecting the library while trying to keep herself alive.
She had survived this long because they had not found her.
Now an army was spreading through the space outside her refuge.
"If they find us…"
Her voice tightened.
"Peter, everything I've done to keep this place safe—"
He reached her before she could finish.
"Hey."
His hands settled gently against her arms.
"Look at me."
Chrona tried, but her eyes kept returning to the display behind him.
"Chrona."
She finally met his gaze.
"None of them are getting in here," he said.
She wanted to believe the certainty in his voice.
But then she noticed the unfinished armor along his side. One shoulder remained exposed, and several components were still waiting beside the platform he had abandoned.
"Wait. Peter, your armor."
His expression changed.
She knew what that meant before he spoke.
"It's only halfway finished," she continued quickly. "Just give it a few more seconds."
"I can't."
"It's almost ready."
"Chrona, Adriel's out there by himself."
Behind them, another warning sounded.
Peter glanced toward it.
"He was already fighting Anansi. Now he has an army coming at him."
"And you're going out there like this?"
Her hand touched the gap between two plates of armor.
Peter looked down at it, then back at her.
He understood what she was asking. She could see that much in his face.
It still did not change his answer.
"Artoria and Ace can finish gathering what we need. I have to help him now."
Ace was already closing the last container.
"We'll be right behind you," he said.
Artoria secured the supplies she had checked and reached for her sword. Her movements had become faster, but she said nothing. There was nothing reassuring she could add that would make the warning disappear.
Chrona's fingers tightened around Peter's wrist.
For a moment, he stayed with her.
The library's alerts continued behind them, each one announcing another development she could not afford to ignore.
Peter lowered his voice.
"Please survive."
Her breath caught.
He held her gaze for another second, then gently slipped his wrist from her hand.
Chrona wanted to tell him to wait. To let the armor finish. To give her enough time to find a safer route, a better opening—anything that did not end with him stepping into that invasion while she remained behind.
Peter turned toward the open space beside the shelves.
A tear opened before him.
Beyond it, the Bridge shone white around dark, spreading disturbances.
"Peter, wait!"
He stopped at the threshold and looked back.
Chrona stood where he had left her, one hand still slightly extended.
"I love you."
The words came out barely above a whisper.
He heard them.
His face softened.
"I love you too."
Then Peter stepped through the opening and went straight into war.
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
A few minutes earlier, Anansi attacked before the first rank finished crossing.
Adriel caught his wrist, turned beneath the arm, and drove the Spider God into the path of an incoming spear. Anansi twisted aside. The weapon scraped his ribs and buried itself in the Dark behind him.
Adriel seized the shaft.
Toxin closed around the spearman's face, fixing his head in place while Adriel wrenched the weapon sideways. His neck broke. Before the body fell, the Guardian pulled it across his chest.
Three bolts struck the corpse.
The fourth passed through it and opened Adriel's side.
He staggered, threw the body into the approaching line, and opened a portal beneath the next attacker's leading foot.
The man dropped halfway through.
Adriel closed it.
Blood struck his boots. He was already moving.
A woman raised a hand behind the advancing swordsmen. Pressure tightened around his brain; her voice began forming inside his skull.
Adriel found the contact and drove a concentrated burst of telepathic force back through it.
Her head snapped backward.
He pulled her into reach with a tendril and drove a hardened blade through her open mouth. She went limp against his arm. He tore the blade free and kicked her body into the men trying to reach him.
Something struck his injured shoulder.
His arm stopped working.
A hooked weapon had sunk through the joint. The Dark holding it pulled, trying to drag him backward while another approached with a glowing palm.
Adriel let himself be pulled.
He drove his forehead into the first man's nose, wrapped Toxin around the hook's shaft, and tore it from his shoulder. Blood ran down his chest.
He buried the hook beneath its owner's jaw.
Then he shoved the dying man into the glowing palm.
The discharge detonated between them.
Adriel hit the terrain on his hands and knees. Toxin pressed into the hole in his shoulder, plugging it while the flesh underneath remained stubbornly open.
No healing.
No time.
Anansi's heel struck the back of his head.
His face hit the ground.
The God caught his hair and dragged him upward.
"Look at them."
Across the Bridge, the portals continued admitting Darks. Those already through spread into separate formations, leaving the crossings clear for the ranks behind them.
Someone had planned this.
Anansi slammed a knee into Adriel's spine.
"How many do you think you can kill?"
Adriel reached backward and caught the God's forearm.
"Enough to get to you."
A blade formed along his elbow.
He drove it behind him.
Anansi released his hair before the point entered his throat, but the edge opened his forearm. Adriel rolled beneath the answering punch and came up inside another attacker's reach.
He caught the man's sword hand.
Magnetism wrenched the blade backward through its owner's chest.
Adriel pushed him away.
A dark shape rose out of the corpse's shadow.
He felt it before he saw the knife.
The Void stirred beneath his skin. The shape convulsed as Adriel forced it solid, then Toxin closed around its throat and drove it into the descending weapon of another Dark.
Both bodies collapsed.
The knife still caught Adriel across the thigh.
His leg nearly folded.
He planted it anyway.
Every useful patch of ground was disappearing beneath advancing bodies. Figures moved above them, preparing attacks he could not afford to let finish.
He threw a barrier across one angle.
It broke almost immediately.
The blast behind it hurled him through a floating wall. He emerged bleeding into another formation and drove two fingers against the nearest Dark's temple.
A compressed Venom discharge went through the skull.
The man dropped.
Adriel caught his collar, pivoted, and hurled him into the next attacker. A tendril pulled their feet out from beneath them while his other arm became a blade.
He cut before they landed.
Then Anansi was there again.
He struck Adriel's damaged shoulder, caught the arm as it dropped, and twisted it behind his back. Two Darks seized his remaining limbs.
The Spider God pressed a thumb into the tear in his cheek.
Adriel screamed.
A stinger extended beneath Anansi's other wrist.
Blue lightning crossed the formation.
Mjolnir struck Anansi across the face.
The God disappeared through the ranks behind him, taking several bodies with him before smashing through a suspended structure.
Adriel's captors turned.
Two mechanical limbs punched through them.
One emerged through a breastplate. The other pierced a throat, its pointed tip carrying a spray of blood past Adriel's shoulder.
The limbs withdrew.
Both Darks fell.
Peter landed beside him.
Red and gold armor covered his chest, his right arm, and scattered sections of his legs. Elsewhere, the familiar fabric of his suit remained exposed between unfinished connections and empty mounting points. His helmet had only partially formed around the mask beneath it.
A blue-white core pulsed inside a temporary brace at his sternum.
Speed Force lightning raced through the incomplete armor.
Two mechanical limbs spread from his back. The others remained folded against an unfinished housing.
Mjolnir returned to his hand.
Adriel stared at him for half a second.
"Where's the rest of your suit?"
"Didn't have time."
A blade descended toward Peter's exposed shoulder.
He caught the wrist, turned, and drove Mjolnir through the attacker's ribs. The body struck the next line hard enough to fold several Darks around it.
Peter caught Adriel beneath his good arm.
"Can you move?"
Adriel planted his bleeding leg.
"Ask me somewhere else."
They vanished in a burst of lightning as the ground beneath them erupted.
Peter dragged him across the collapsing terrain and released him on a broad stretch of unfinished geometry. Adriel forced the surface solid beneath their feet.
The nearest Darks immediately changed direction.
Others stayed where they were.
Those were the ones Adriel watched.
Hands rose across the surrounding formations. Weapons turned. Symbols opened above their heads.
"Down!"
Peter dropped.
Adriel caught the first incoming beam inside a small portal and released it behind the caster's head.
The Dark's skull burst.
The second attack struck their platform.
Peter leaped clear while Adriel tore the damaged section away, letting it fall before the spreading energy could reach the rest of their footing.
A third blast came from above.
Mjolnir intercepted it.
Light wrapped around the hammer's head, trembling against the metal until Peter turned and hurled it back into the formation overhead.
The returning discharge scattered bodies across the white expanse.
It barely made a gap.
More Darks passed through it.
Adriel wiped blood out of his eye.
They were spreading around the platform now, closing the routes Peter had used to reach him.
He reached for his friend's mind.
Stay close.
Peter's answer came immediately.
Wasn't planning on leaving.
A heavily armored Dark landed between them.
The impact split the platform.
Adriel caught the descending weapon against a hardened forearm. The edge sank through Toxin and stopped against bone.
Peter's web caught the attacker behind the knees.
He pulled.
The Dark's stance opened, and Adriel drove a blade beneath his chin. It punched through the roof of his mouth and lodged inside his skull.
Before Adriel could withdraw it, something struck him from behind.
He stumbled into the corpse.
A second blow opened his back.
Peter caught the next strike with a mechanical limb and spun toward the attacker. His heel cracked against the Dark's jaw. Mjolnir followed before the man finished turning.
The head collapsed beneath the hammer.
Adriel tore himself free.
Another Dark slipped through the falling body, his hands already buried in its shadow. Black strands shot toward Peter's exposed core.
Adriel seized them with the Void.
The strands stopped inches from the brace.
He pulled hard enough to drag their owner out of the shadow, then drove a tendril through the man's abdomen and threw him across the platform.
Peter swung Mjolnir.
The body met the hammer in midair.
Blood and shattered armor sprayed into the advancing line.
Neither Guardian watched it land.
They turned back-to-back as the next group reached them.
Adriel ducked a horizontal cut, caught the attacker's elbow, and drove it against the edge of another weapon. The arm came apart at the joint.
He used the severed limb to knock a second blade aside.
Then he stepped through the opening and put his fist into the first Dark's throat.
Cartilage gave beneath his knuckles.
Behind him, Peter's mechanical limbs stabbed into the terrain and lifted him above a pair of sweeping weapons. He pulled both attackers together with webs, dropped between them, and drove Mjolnir into the ground.
Lightning climbed the strands.
Both Darks convulsed.
Peter released the webs before their burning bodies hit him.
A pressure passed through the telepathic connection.
Adriel's vision filled with a familiar interference.
Anansi.
He was reaching for Peter's powers again.
Adriel forced his interface open and caught the intrusion before it settled.
For an instant, he could see the change trying to overwrite Peter's abilities.
He rejected it.
The effort cost him his view of the battlefield.
A fist buried itself in his stomach.
Adriel folded around it.
The Dark in front of him smiled and pushed his other hand toward the open wound in his side.
Toxin caught the wrist.
Adriel clamped his good hand over the man's face.
A Venom discharge flashed between his fingers.
The smile vanished.
He shoved the smoking corpse away and looked up.
Anansi was standing beyond the advancing ranks.
Golden blood ran from his mouth.
His eyes were fixed on Adriel.
"You cannot watch everything."
A cosmic thread snapped across the platform.
Peter's spider-sense caught it first.
He grabbed Adriel and pulled him backward as the thread cut through several Darks rushing toward them. Their upper bodies slid apart before their legs stopped moving.
Anansi stepped through the falling remains.
Peter met him with the hammer.
The God slipped inside the swing and drove a short punch into the unfinished armor along his side.
The plate had never locked into place.
It tore free.
Peter's body bent around the impact.
Anansi caught him behind the neck.
Adriel struck the God's wrist before he could tighten his grip, forcing the hand open. Peter escaped beneath the arm and drove a knee toward Anansi's ribs.
The God turned enough to take it against his hip.
His elbow came down.
Peter blocked it with Mjolnir's handle.
Adriel thrust a blade toward Anansi's throat.
A Dark threw himself into its path.
The point passed through the man's neck.
Anansi used the obstruction.
His fist caught Adriel across the torn cheek, snapping his head sideways.
Peter struck him across the ribs with Mjolnir.
The Spider God skidded backward through the blood covering the platform.
Before either Guardian could follow, a line of armored figures landed between them.
Their shields joined.
Something enormous began gathering behind the barrier.
Adriel could feel its aim shifting past them toward an active information current.
If it missed, it would tear through everything uploading along that route.
He could not afford another collapse.
The shields, he told Peter.
I see them.
Peter threw Mjolnir low.
The hammer skimmed across the platform and struck the nearest shield at its bottom edge. Its owner staggered.
Adriel opened a portal inside that brief gap.
His arm passed through.
A blade emerged beneath the shield bearer's helmet.
He withdrew it, caught the falling body with a tendril, and pulled the corpse out of the line.
Peter was already moving.
Lightning carried him through the opening.
The blast behind the shields fired.
Peter dropped beneath it, drove both feet into the caster's knees, and knocked the man onto his back. The beam carved upward across the Bridge.
Mjolnir returned.
Peter caught it and brought it down.
The beam stopped.
The remaining shield bearers turned inward.
Adriel pulled their weapons sideways with magnetism.
Steel entered exposed backs and throats.
He reached Peter as the last of them fell.
His injured leg dragged for one step before he forced it straight.
Peter noticed.
Adriel felt the question through their connection.
Don't.
Peter said nothing.
One of his mechanical limbs folded toward Adriel's shoulder. A burst of webbing pressed against the wound, securing Toxin's rough seal before the limb snapped outward to intercept another weapon.
It bought him enough time to breathe.
Then a cosmic web caught Peter across the chest.
Anansi pulled him out of the formation.
Peter struck the platform shoulder-first and slid toward the God, the unfinished sections of his armor scraping against the ground.
Adriel reached for him.
Three Darks intercepted him at once.
A blade entered his side.
Another scraped across his ribs.
He caught the third attacker's wrist and shoved it into the first man's face, letting the weapon punch through the eye socket.
Toxin wrapped around the second Dark's neck.
Adriel pulled him down and drove his knee upward.
Bone broke against his thigh.
He tore the blade from his side and hurled it after Peter.
Anansi tilted his head.
The weapon passed his face.
That was enough.
Peter twisted in the web, caught the strand around Mjolnir's handle, and spun the hammer. The cosmic thread tightened around the metal.
He pulled himself toward Anansi instead of fighting the drag.
The God's eyes narrowed.
Peter's boots struck his chest.
Anansi staggered.
Adriel appeared behind him.
His elbow caught the Spider God beneath the skull and drove him forward into Peter's returning hammer.
The impact threw Anansi off the platform.
For one breath, they had room.
Then the surrounding formations moved in.
Adriel turned toward the nearest crossing.
Bodies filled the approach behind the front line. Above them, more figures descended, their powers casting overlapping colors across the Bridge's white expanse.
They had killed their way through the space immediately around them.
The army still surrounded it.
Peter landed beside him.
One mechanical limb dragged against the ground. Its damaged joint tried to straighten, failed, and locked half-open.
Blood darkened the fabric beneath his broken side plate.
Adriel flexed his good hand.
His fingers trembled.
We can't keep doing this, Peter said.
Adriel watched Anansi rise beyond the platform.
I know.
The Spider God raised his hand.
Cosmic energy gathered above the surrounding Darks.
They spread away from its path.
Adriel tried to open a portal beneath Peter's feet.
A ring of symbols snapped shut around their platform.
The spell caught the opening before it widened.
Peter turned toward the nearest caster.
There were several.
All watching them.
Anansi's arm began to descend.
Fire crossed the space between him and the Guardians.
The God twisted away.
A fist wrapped in Armament Haki and cosmic flame tore through the place his head had occupied.
Ace landed hard enough to break the edge of the platform.
He looked at the ring of symbols.
Then at the men maintaining it.
"Move."
Adriel grabbed Peter and threw them both backward.
Ace drove his burning fist into the ground.
Flame raced through the platform's cracks and erupted beneath the casters. Their formation broke as bodies shot upward, burning inside their armor.
The ring vanished.
Anansi lunged toward Ace.
A golden blade intercepted his stinger.
Artoria stepped into the space between them, turned the weapon aside, and drove her shoulder into the God's chest.
He moved back only a step.
She used it.
Her sword swept across his torso.
Anansi bent away from the edge, but the tip opened another line beneath his ribs.
Ace caught him with a flaming kick before he could retaliate.
The Spider God crashed into the ranks behind him.
Artoria turned toward the army.
The first Dark reached her with a two-handed strike.
She caught it near the base of her blade, stepped past his leading foot, and drove her sword through his chest.
Golden light burst out of his back.
She pulled the weapon free and turned the same movement into a cut across the next attacker's throat.
Ace moved to her other side.
A massive Dark dropped toward them with both fists raised.
The pirate caught one wrist, pulled the body across his hip, and drove a Haki-coated fist beneath its breastplate.
Cosmic flame erupted inside the armor.
Ace threw the burning body into the approach.
Artoria's next swing sent a low arc of light through the figures trying to pass around it.
For the first time since the invasion began, the pressure eased on one side of the battlefield.
Adriel nearly fell.
Toxin tightened around his injured knee before it could buckle.
Ace glanced back.
His expression hardened at the amount of blood covering him.
"Can you still fight?"
Adriel looked past him.
Anansi was getting up.
"Yeah."
Ace followed his gaze.
"Then go finish him."
A weapon struck Artoria's guard.
She turned it aside and cut through the attacker's forearm before driving her blade into his neck.
"We will hold the approaches," she said.
Peter looked toward the ranks still spreading across the Bridge.
"There are too many."
"I can see that," Ace answered.
Flame gathered along both his arms.
He drove one burning hand forward. The blast caught a descending group and hurled them back into the formation above.
Artoria planted herself beside him.
"We cannot hold them indefinitely," she said. "Use the time we give you."
A Dark tried to pass between them.
Ace caught him by the throat.
Artoria's blade took his head before the pirate released the body.
Their eyes remained on the army.
They had already begun.
Adriel reached for Peter's mind.
Anansi. Nothing else.
Peter tightened his grip around Mjolnir.
With you.
Behind them, Ace's flames spread across the remaining approaches. Artoria moved along their edge, cutting down those who broke through while the pirate struck at the formations preparing attacks farther away.
The army pressed against them.
They held their ground.
Adriel forced his damaged arm upward. Toxin hardened around the shoulder, bracing the joint until he could keep his hand raised.
It hurt enough to blur his vision.
He blinked the blood away.
Across the platform, Anansi watched the four Guardians separate into two fronts.
His stingers extended.
Adriel stepped toward him.
Peter moved beside him, blue lightning gathering around the exposed core of his unfinished armor.
Anansi struck first.
Adriel turned the stinger aside with a hardened forearm.
Peter's hammer came around from the opposite side.
The Spider God raised his other arm to meet it.
Both Guardians drove forward as fire and golden light tore through the army behind them.
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
Ace caught the descending axe between his palms.
Armament Haki hardened his fingers around its edge. The Dark holding it tried to wrench the weapon free, but Ace stepped forward instead, driving his forehead into the man's face.
The grip loosened.
Ace tore the axe away and buried it in its owner's chest.
Cosmic fire flooded the wound.
He kicked the burning body into the formation behind it, then vanished in a streak of blue electricity before the explosion reached him.
Artoria passed through the opening he left.
Her sword took one Dark beneath the jaw, turned another's spear aside, and continued across an exposed throat. She stepped past the falling bodies without stopping, golden energy gathering along her blade.
A broad swing sent that light through the next rank.
Bodies separated beneath the arc. Those standing behind them barely had time to raise their weapons before Ace appeared among them.
His fist struck the ground.
Fire erupted outward in a low, expanding ring.
Artoria leaped above it, turning in the air as a winged Dark descended toward her. She caught his blade against her own, pushed it away from her face, and drove a boot into his chest.
He fell into the flames.
She landed with her sword already moving.
There were still too many.
Every gap they opened filled with another rush of bodies. Some Darks charged through the remains of their own allies. Others stayed back, firing between the advancing ranks whenever the Guardians were forced to turn.
A spear struck Artoria's breastplate.
The point scraped across the damaged metal and opened her side.
She grunted, trapped the shaft beneath her arm, and pulled its owner toward her. Her sword entered beneath his ribs. Before he could fall, she drove him backward into the next attacker and released a short burst of golden energy through both.
On her left, Ace caught a chain around his forearm.
The links tightened.
A Dark at the other end pulled while a second figure approached Ace's exposed back.
Artoria turned toward him.
Ace was faster.
Speed Force lightning flashed around his legs as he stepped backward into the approaching attacker. His elbow broke the man's nose; his hand caught the back of his head and forced him into the tightening chain.
Ace pulled.
The links crushed the Dark's throat.
Then cosmic flame raced along the metal.
The chain bearer screamed.
Ace released the burning weapon and drove forward, a dark trail of fire following his fist. The punch passed through the man's raised guard and buried itself inside his torso.
He tore his arm free.
Artoria's blade flashed past his shoulder, taking the head of a Dark who had nearly reached him.
"Behind you," she said.
"Yeah. Got him."
Ace turned, caught the falling head, and threw it into the next attacker's face.
Artoria moved beside him.
They advanced together.
Her sword cleared the space directly ahead while his flames reached the formations beyond it. When enemies tried to surround them, blue lightning carried Ace around the flank, forcing them back into the path of Artoria's next swing.
Their movements grew less clean as the fighting continued.
Ace took a cut across his shoulder. Artoria lost her footing on a surface slick with blood and caught a fist against her cheek before she could recover.
Neither stopped.
Golden light and cosmic fire swept across the remaining approaches.
Eventually, the rush began to thin.
The final few Darks tried to close the distance together.
Artoria turned the first strike aside and drove her sword through its owner's throat. She pulled the blade free, stepped around the body, and cut across the next attacker's knees before finishing him on the ground.
Ace caught the last lesser Dark by the face.
The man's weapon struck his ribs.
Ace's grip tightened.
"Enough."
Cosmic flame ignited beneath his palm.
The Dark's head vanished inside it. Fire swept through the rest of his body, consuming flesh, armor, and bone until Ace's fingers closed on empty space.
A few glowing particles drifted between them.
Then those disappeared too.
For the first time since they had taken over the approaches, nothing rushed to fill the gap.
Ace remained where he was, arm extended.
His shoulders rose and fell.
Around them, every surviving stretch of terrain bore the remains of the fighting. Blood ran through cracks in unfinished geometry. Severed limbs lay tangled in broken weapons, while drifting fragments carried pieces of the dead toward the information currents below.
The smell of burned flesh hung over everything.
Ace dragged his forearm across his face.
It cleared the blood from his eyes and smeared the rest across his cheek.
"How many…" He stopped to pull in another breath. "How many of these fucking things are there?"
His hand dropped.
Blood dripped from his knuckles.
Artoria stood beside him, breathing almost as heavily. Her armor had split along one side, and dark stains spread through the fabric beneath it. Blood coated the hand holding her sword.
Much of it belonged to the Darks.
Enough belonged to her.
Ace tried to straighten.
His knee bent unexpectedly.
Artoria caught him beneath the arm before he could drop, bracing her feet as his weight settled against her.
"I'm standing," he muttered.
"Then continue doing so."
He glanced at her, managed the faintest smile, and concentrated on his breathing.
The Bridge shook.
A distant impact sent loose weapons sliding through the blood around their boots.
Artoria looked toward it.
Far beyond the battlefield, Anansi thrust a palm toward Adriel's face.
Cosmic light erupted at point-blank range.
Adriel bent sharply beneath the blast. It passed over his shoulder and tore through an unfinished structure behind him.
He slipped around the God's side and locked both arms around his waist.
Then he lifted.
Even from that distance, Artoria could see the strain in his movement.
Adriel arched backward, carried Anansi off his feet, and twisted as they fell. The Spider God struck face-first through the wall of a floating building.
Its unfinished floors folded around them.
A streak of blue lightning cut through the collapsing structure a moment later.
Peter was still with him.
Artoria tightened her hold beneath Ace's arm.
They needed to finish that fight.
Soon.
Ace followed her gaze.
"Please tell me that did something."
Before she could answer, another disturbance passed through the Bridge.
This one came from behind them.
Artoria turned.
She could feel pressure gathering beyond the routes the first wave had used. More presences were approaching, packed behind boundaries that were beginning to give.
Her grip tightened around her sword.
Ace noticed.
"No."
She looked at him.
He shut his eyes briefly.
"No. Don't give me that look."
"Another wave is coming."
"Of course it is."
Ace pushed himself upright, easing his weight off her.
He had barely found his balance when a portal opened above the remains of the first wave.
Darkness spread across its edges.
Figures emerged.
The lesser Darks came through in ranks, stepping onto floating terrain or descending toward the blood-covered approaches. Those at the front spread outward, opening routes for the formations following them.
Ace raised his hands.
A weak flame flickered over his fingers.
He clenched them until it burned steadily.
Then the figures nearest the portal stopped advancing.
They moved aside.
Two presences crossed the threshold behind them.
Artoria felt the difference before she properly saw their faces.
Her breathing caught.
The knowledge granted to her as a Guardian answered the recognition with names and fragments of abilities she desperately wished she did not need to consider.
Anos Voldigoad.
Sinbad.
The first wore a pale uniform untouched by the blood drifting through the air. Dark hair framed a face that showed little interest in the slaughter beneath him.
His red eyes settled on the two Guardians.
Beside him, long purple hair shifted over white fabric and gold ornaments. Sinbad surveyed the bodies scattered across the approaches, then lifted his gaze toward Ace and Artoria.
Black motes circled him, gathering and separating like a restless flock.
The lesser Darks continued moving around the pair.
Neither newcomer hurried.
Artoria could feel their presence pressing against her senses, far heavier than anything that had come through with the first wave.
Pure Darks.
Two of them.
Ace stared upward.
"Oh, come the fuck on."
Anos glanced toward him.
A small magic circle appeared near the Demon King's hand.
Its movement was slow enough to watch.
The broken weapons beneath him began to fracture.
"You appear exhausted."
Ace's jaw tightened.
Sinbad looked past them toward the distant flashes of lightning and cosmic power.
Then his attention returned to the two Guardians holding the approaches.
"And your companions seem occupied."
Ace drew a breath to answer.
"Save it," Artoria said quietly.
He looked at her.
She had already stepped forward.
Her sword rose despite the trembling in her arm. She adjusted her grip, planted her feet on the blood-slick surface, and fixed her eyes on the newcomers.
The first ranks of lesser Darks lowered their weapons.
Behind them, more continued pouring through the portal.
Ace looked toward the distant fight once more.
Then he turned back.
Cosmic fire climbed his forearms, darkening as he fed more power into it. Armament Haki spread across his fists, and blue electricity snapped between his legs and the ground.
His whole body hurt.
Artoria was bleeding beside him.
The two figures above them had arrived fresh, with another army at their backs.
Ace rolled his shoulders and raised his burning hands anyway.
"All right, assholes."
He spat blood onto the ground.
"You want past us?"
Artoria's blade flared gold.
"Come and fucking earn it."
Anos lowered his hand.
Sinbad moved beside him.
The lesser Darks surged forward as both Pure Darks descended toward the Guardians.
Ace launched himself into the approaching ranks, leaving fire and blue lightning behind him.
Artoria accelerated at his side, her sword drawn back for the first cut.
Ace's fist met Anos's palm above the advancing ranks.
Cosmic flame burst between them.
Beside them, Artoria's sword struck the barrier Sinbad raised across his forearm. Golden light spread through its surface, bowing the shield inward before the force threw both fighters apart.
The overlapping impacts shook the Bridge.
Below them, lesser Darks staggered across broken terrain. A wave of pressure swept through the surrounding debris, scattering bodies, weapons, and unfinished structures into the information currents.
Ace tried to drive his fist farther into Anos's guard.
The Demon King's fingers tightened.
Something began stripping the fire from Ace's arm.
Before he could pull away, cold passed through the space around them.
His flames stopped moving.
Not extinguished.
Stopped.
Their edges hung motionless, caught halfway through their own expansion.
Sinbad lowered his hand.
The air around Ace and Artoria thickened as Valefor's Stagnation arrested movement throughout the region. Wind gathered above them, compressed, and drove downward.
Both Guardians fell.
Artoria struck the remains of a platform hard enough to crack it beneath her boots. Ace hit beside her, one knee punching through the surface.
The pressure continued.
Their footing began to descend.
Ace gritted his teeth.
His fire strained against the stillness and barely moved.
Then blue electricity erupted from his body.
The Speed Force drove fresh momentum through him faster than the surrounding field could arrest it. His leg shook as he forced it straight. Lightning spread beneath his feet, branching across the platform and holding it against the crushing wind.
The descent stopped.
For a moment, neither side gained ground.
Ace could feel the effort burning through him.
"Artoria."
"I know."
She pushed off the platform.
Ace's lightning carried her through the edge of the field, and golden energy burst from her armor as she accelerated toward Sinbad.
Her sword thrust directly toward his throat.
A dark magic circle opened between them.
The blade struck it.
Artoria's arms jolted, but she kept driving forward.
Anos stood beside Sinbad, one hand raised.
His gaze remained on Ace.
That was a mistake Ace could use.
He abandoned the struggling platform and launched himself upward.
Cosmic flame wrapped around his shoulders. Speed Force lightning tightened through it, compressing the blaze into a narrow, violent streak.
Anos turned.
Ace struck him beneath the ribs.
The first impact bent him backward.
Ace caught the front of his uniform before he could move away, planted a foot against his hip, and released another burst of speed.
They tore out of the battlefield together.
Behind them, Artoria's sword broke through the abandoned barrier.
Sinbad moved aside.
Golden light cut across the place his neck had occupied.
Ace saw no more.
Anos drove an elbow into the back of his head.
His vision flashed white.
They punched through a wall of incoming information and struck something flat, bright, and covered in enormous text.
Ace hit a blue hyperlink.
It broke around his shoulders.
He slid across a white surface beneath a towering account name.
Bungie.
Below it, a post introduced the studio's October community update. A preview card carrying the article's title stretched across the space behind him.
Ace barely registered any of it before Anos landed on his chest.
The surface folded beneath them.
Ace caught the next punch against both forearms. His guard held for one strike, then another, but the third drove his own knuckles into his face.
Blood filled his mouth.
He turned into flame.
Anos's hand followed him through the transformation and closed around his throat.
"That will not separate you from me."
Ace's body snapped solid inside the grip.
He planted both feet against Anos's abdomen and kicked.
The Demon King moved back a few inches.
Enough.
Ace caught his wrist, twisted beneath it, and drove a burning elbow across his jaw.
Anos's head turned.
Ace followed with a punch beneath the ribs.
The flame struck.
For an instant, part of the pale uniform began coming apart in a way that had nothing to do with heat.
Anos's eyes narrowed.
The fire vanished.
Ace felt the interruption like a hand closing around his own power.
The Demon King struck him in the sternum.
Air left his lungs.
A second blow lifted him from the post's surface.
Anos caught his ankle before he could recover and swung him through the embedded preview card. Text and images folded around Ace's back, then tore apart as the Demon King hurled him out through the post's outer boundary.
The entire card flickered.
Its contents disappeared behind a loading symbol.
Then that vanished too.
Something went wrong.
Ace crashed into a mountain.
The mountain broke into sharply drawn pieces.
He emerged from the other side, struck another ridge, and tore a trench through a landscape rendered in thick black lines.
Two stick figures stopped fighting.
One stood with a fist raised.
The other slowly turned its round head toward the approaching wreckage.
Ace rolled between them, coughing blood.
"Oh, you've got to be—"
Anos appeared above him.
Ace grabbed both stickmen.
He lifted them directly into the descending punch.
The figures reacted immediately.
One planted its feet against Ace's forearm. The other twisted sideways, dragging its companion out of the fist's path.
Their limbs stretched.
The animation held for a single exaggerated frame.
Then one stickman's fist expanded to several times the size of its body and struck Anos across the face.
The Demon King disappeared over the mountains.
A long white impact streak remained behind him.
Ace stared.
The stickman stared back.
Then it pointed furiously at the hand still gripping its body.
Ace put both figures down.
A laugh escaped him.
"No fucking way."
One of them folded its arms.
Ace looked toward the distant crater Anos had made.
Another laugh followed, louder this time.
"Dude got socked in the fac-!"
Anos's foot struck him in the side of the head.
Ace left the animation before the laugh finished.
He crashed through a half-loaded portfolio page, tore across a rotating architectural model, and struck the center of an unfinished character rig.
Colored control curves tangled around his limbs.
Anos followed him through.
Ace caught the approaching wrist and dragged the Demon King into the rig beside him. He drove a knee into his face, turned, and smashed him through the model's skeletal framework.
The rig broke apart.
Anos caught one of the floating control shapes.
He pulled.
Ace's arm jerked sideways.
His own fist struck him across the mouth.
"The fuck?"
Anos released the curve and punched him through the project.
They emerged inside a looping animation of a city street.
Ace hit the pavement.
Anos landed beside him, caught his shoulder, and drove him face-first through the same stretch of road three times as the loop reset around them.
On the fourth repetition, Ace exploded.
Cosmic fire consumed the street.
He emerged from the blaze beneath Anos's guard and drove a Haki-coated fist into his chin.
The Demon King's jaw broke.
Ace felt it.
He also saw it correct itself before Anos's head finished turning.
His stomach tightened.
Anos answered with a short punch that went through the front of Ace's shoulder.
Blood sprayed across the repeating background.
Ace screamed and drove his free hand against the Demon King's face.
Fire erupted between his fingers.
Anos tore himself away.
For a moment, the flames followed.
Ace felt them catch at something deeper than skin.
Then the Demon King's eyes brightened.
The connection broke.
The fire disappeared.
Anos stood several yards away, the damage across his face already closing.
"Your flames are reaching for more than flesh."
Ace pressed a hand against his shoulder.
"Starting to bother you?"
"Starting to become familiar."
The answer chilled him more than the wound.
Anos stepped forward.
The animation beneath his foot lost its color.
Ace moved before the hand reached him.
Blue lightning carried him around the Demon King's flank. He drove a kick into Anos's knee, caught the back of his uniform, and threw him through the boundary of the loop.
They struck an unfinished forum page.
Then a rendered room.
Then the wireframe skeleton of a building that had not yet received its textures.
Neither gained enough distance to stop the other following.
Ace caught Anos beneath the chin and drove him upward through three floors. Anos seized his arm, turned in midair, and slammed him backward through the remaining structure.
A darkened hand passed close to Ace's throat.
He twisted away.
The edge of the attack took part of his collar and the skin beneath it.
The missing flesh did not burn.
It simply failed to remain.
Ace pulled away sharply.
Anos advanced again.
Another footstep.
Another patch of the surrounding structure collapsed into black ash.
The Guardian knowledge in Ace's mind supplied a name.
Gilieriam Naviem.
Power condensed inside the Demon King's source was being released with each step.
He was still getting stronger.
Ace could not keep trading damage with him.
The wound in his shoulder remained open. His breathing had become rough and uneven. He had already spent too much strength holding the first wave back, and every attempt to use his authority as a Guardian was being interrupted before it could take hold.
Anos had no intention of giving him time to work.
Ace ducked a punch, drove his elbow upward, and struck the Demon King across the mouth.
A tooth broke loose.
It disappeared into Anos's repairing flesh.
Ace barely had time to hate that before the Demon King caught him behind the neck.
They struck the next upload together.
Darkness swallowed the unfinished building.
A brilliant accretion disk curved across their surroundings.
Ace felt his body stretch.
His grip on Anos tore loose.
They separated, dragged into different trajectories around the black center of a simulation still being processed for a YouTube upload.
The image had acquired depth around them.
The gravity had acquired consequences.
Ace spun away from the disk, fire trailing from his limbs. He forced himself into a wider orbit, but the surrounding light kept folding across his path.
Across the singularity, Anos stood against the pull.
His eyes moved toward its center.
A magic circle opened.
The dark region shuddered.
Ace felt the gravity weaken.
Anos raised his hand.
The singularity disappeared.
Its lightless center became an empty patch of unfinished rendering. The disk continued turning for a fraction of a second before its motion began losing coherence.
Ace's trajectory straightened.
He saw Anos's attention shift back toward him.
That was all the opening he was going to get.
He gathered everything into his right hand.
The cosmic flames tightened until their broad glow became a dense, dark blaze wrapped around his knuckles.
Haki compressed beneath it.
Blue lightning climbed his arm, folding the momentum he had carried through every collision into the strike he was preparing.
His shoulder screamed.
He ignored it.
For one absurd moment, he remembered Garp.
The old man's fists.
The certainty that there was nowhere to hide when one came down.
Ace bared his bloody teeth.
"Let's see how you like this."
Anos took another step.
Destruction rolled through the unfinished video.
His gaze fixed on Ace's hand, then sharpened.
The Demon King understood what was gathering there.
He raised his palm.
Layers of magic unfolded around it, compressing inward until a dark, burning center formed between his fingers.
"Egil Grone Angdroa."
The name arrived with the certainty of something that had ended worlds.
Ace did not stop.
He could feel Anos drawing more power outward from his source, feeding the spell.
He could also feel the connection.
The same existence he had tried to reach twice already.
This time, its power was extended toward him.
Ace drove himself forward.
"GALAXY IMPACT!"
Their attacks met.
The unfinished video vanished.
For an instant, the Bridge tried to process everything that had just happened.
Then it stopped.
Information currents hung motionless across the white expanse.
Fragments remained suspended halfway through their destruction.
An upload counter halted before its next number appeared.
The pressure of the collision had not disappeared.
It had nowhere left to go.
Inside that arrested instant, Ace saw Anos's other hand move.
Dark magic covered it.
The fingers were aimed toward the center of his chest.
Ace could not withdraw.
His right arm was already committed.
He turned instead.
He gave the attack his left side.
The Bridge resumed.
A violent crack passed through the surrounding layer.
Ace stood with his right arm driven through Anos's chest.
His fist had emerged from the Demon King's back.
Dark blood ran over his forearm.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Ace felt the absence.
He looked down.
His left arm was gone.
So was part of the shoulder from which it should have hung.
The wound's edges flickered.
Something was still spreading from it.
Anos had missed the center of his existence.
He had not missed enough for Ace to be safe.
"Fuck—"
The pain hit.
Ace nearly folded.
His right fist shifted inside the Demon King's chest.
The flesh immediately tried to close around it.
Anos's hand rose toward Ace's face.
Ace's flames ignited inside him.
The repairing flesh stopped.
The Demon King's fingers stiffened.
Ace forced himself to remain upright.
He knew what destroying a heart would accomplish against this opponent.
Nothing permanent.
Even tearing apart the source would not guarantee the end he needed.
His flames followed the contact deeper.
He stopped treating Anos as a body to burn.
He reached for the complete existence of the Pure Dark standing in front of him—the character whose flesh, source, magic, and returns from destruction all belonged to the same persistent identity.
That was what a Guardian had to remove.
It was also what Anos had prevented him from reaching until now.
The Demon King's eyes widened slightly.
Magic gathered around the wound.
Ace felt it trying to destroy the flame, sever the connection, and restore the state that had existed before the punch.
He held on.
His Haki kept the contact from slipping.
His cosmic fire carried the erasure through it.
The Speed Force gave him the fraction of a moment he needed to keep acting while his body tried to collapse.
Then the attack eating into his shoulder surged again.
Ace cried out.
The edge of his torso began to fade.
He pulled every surviving part of himself taut around the wound.
Haki fixed his concentration on the boundary of his body. Lightning raced along the spreading damage, contesting its advance, while a narrow ribbon of cosmic flame burned through the destructive magic still clinging to the wound.
It kept trying to move.
He kept forcing it back.
The attack had taken his arm before it reached what Anos had intended to seize.
Ace still had enough of himself left to fight it.
Barely.
He drove his feet harder against the broken upload beneath them.
The fading edge stopped.
His arm did not return.
Blood continued running down his side.
Anos's free hand rose another inch.
A magic circle completed around his wrist.
Then part of the circle disappeared.
The spell folded into the missing section and failed.
Ace felt the same thing happening inside the body around his arm.
The Demon King's source continued resisting. Destruction surged against the fire, trying to overwhelm the contact and turn the approaching end into something he could survive.
Ace's flames reached beyond the source.
The identity sustaining that resistance began coming apart.
Anos looked directly at him.
For the first time, the calm in his expression required effort.
"You are not attempting to destroy my source."
Ace's teeth were clenched so tightly that answering hurt.
"Took you long enough."
The Demon King tried to move.
Part of his shoulder disappeared.
No wound remained.
The space where it had been simply stopped containing him.
Ace's knees shook.
He wanted to pull his arm free. He wanted to fall, breathe, find something to stop the blood running down his side.
He could do none of those things yet.
Anos's body began breaking into pale fragments.
Some vanished.
Others tried to turn inward, gathering around the remains of the source.
Ace burned those connections away before they could complete.
He would not give him another return.
Not after paying this much to get here.
The Demon King's arm fell apart between the elbow and wrist.
His expression hardened.
"I have overcome annihilation before, Guardian."
Ace finally withdrew his fist.
The fire remained inside the disappearing figure.
He stumbled back a step, his remaining hand dripping blood. Lightning flickered weakly around his legs, keeping him upright.
Anos tried to speak again.
Part of his face vanished before the words formed.
Ace spat blood onto the broken surface between them.
"Get fucked, Your Majesty."
With the only hand he had left, he flipped the Demon King off.
To Be Continued…