Six months had passed since the Burst wave turned Nadezhdivya‑12 into a glass crater. Six months since Jer's twisted hand slipped from the rail and his face, pale and peaceful, accepted death because she could not carry him fast enough.
Netoshka Nezvany still saw him sometimes in the snow—not a hallucination, just her mind replaying the moment over and over, a wound that would not close. She had failed Ruzina. Failed Krovka. Failed Yevgeny. Failed Jer. Everyone who followed her died; everyone who trusted her suffered. The pattern was absolute.
There was no voice whispering in her head anymore. No Curator, no Directive. What remained was a cold fire in her chest—the rage that had kept her alive through white rooms and war crimes and betrayals. That rage was hers. Not implanted, not programmed. It was the only thing left that felt real.
So she hunted.
Kersnik had built the Synarchy. Kersnik had created the Burst. Kersnik had turned children into weapons and nations into ash. He was still alive somewhere, pulling strings from the shadows. She would find him. She would kill him. And then, perhaps, the weight of the dead would become bearable.
───
The Permafrost Expanse had no sun, only a grey smear of light that bled through the clouds for a few hours each day. The rest was darkness and wind and cold so deep it felt like memory. Netoshka knelt behind a ridge of black ice, her scope pressed to her eye. Below, a Synarchy convoy crawled across the frozen valley—three armored transports, two supply trucks, a dozen soldiers in white thermal gear.
She pulled the trigger. The first transport exploded. The second veered into a ridge. The third kept moving. She was already gone, her boots crunching through fresh powder, the wind erasing her tracks.
The soldiers called her the Glitching Aberration. A woman who bent reality around her, who moved through fire and ice like a wound in the world. She didn't care what they called her. She only cared about finding Kersnik.
The war began without warning.
Netoshka was in a bunker buried in a crevasse when the shortwave radio crackled on the wall.
"—emergency broadcast. The Concord of Nations has collapsed. Multiple borders breached. This is not a border dispute—this is war—"
She ignored it.
"—Riyue has mobilized its eastern fleets. Rosalvya is massing troops on the Averikan frontier. The Tenth Cataclysmic War has begun—"
Netoshka wiped her blade on a dead man's coat. She had no nation, no side, no allegiance. She had only her Vengeful hunt.
───
The war spread like wildfire, but she moved through it like smoke. She struck Synarchy convoys in the highlands. Intercepted their communications in ruined cities. Interrogated their officers in collapsed bunkers.
"Where is Kersnik?"
"I don't know—please—"
"Where is He?"
"He's preparing something big. Something that will end everything—"
She killed him and moved on.
The Concord shattered completely. Every nation fought every other nation for resources, territory, old grudges that had festered for generations. The fighting grew so intense that the very Terrans seemed to groan under the weight of it. And the more death occurred, the more the sky began to crack.
She was on a ridge overlooking the frozen sea when it happened. A vertical line of impossible light appeared on the horizon—jagged, screaming, bleeding colors that had no names. The sky was tearing open. From the rift came the Unwoven.
They had no fixed shape. They shifted and writhed, their bodies made of angles that hurt to look at. They sang in frequencies that bypassed the ears and burrowed directly into the mind. Humanity's wars had weakened reality itself, and now the things from beyond had come to collect.
Netoshka ran. Behind her, cities burned. Armies collapsed. The world began to die.
───
Years passed. She stopped counting after the first winter.
The world fractured. The old nations collapsed. Cities became graveyards. The Unwoven consumed everything in their path. Netoshka survived, moving through the ruins, hunting Synarchy remnants, killing when she had to, eating when she could. Her body was a map of untreated wounds. Her coat was rags. Her rifle had been empty for months. The rage was still there, burning low but never dying.
She was in the rubble of Port Victory when they found her. Fifteen Synarchy soldiers, moving through the wreckage with professional silence. She killed four, wounded two, but she was too weak, too tired, too broken. A rifle butt slammed into her skull. The world spun. She collapsed, her face hitting broken concrete, her blood pooling on the frost‑covered ground.
They surrounded her. Rifles raised. Their leader stepped forward, reaching for a blade.
"Netoshka Nezvany," he said. "By order of Supreme Commander Kersnik, you are sentenced to—"
She didn't hear the rest. The world was fading. Gray at the edges. Cold spreading through her chest. The rage was still there, but distant now, like a fire seen from across a frozen lake. She thought of Jer, of Ruzina, of Yevgeny, of Krovka. I'm sorry. I couldn't finish it.
The leader raised his blade.
Then a sound—wet and sharp. The leader's head snapped sideways, blood spraying across her face. He crumpled. Gunfire. Chaos. Screams. Within seconds, all fifteen soldiers lay dead.
A figure knelt beside her. Tall, lean. His face was uncovered—sharp features, pale skin, eyes that glowed faintly with the same teal light as her scar.
"Glitching Aberration," he said. "You're dying."
"Who are you?"
"My name is Nezurim. And you're not finished yet."
He pressed nothing into her hand, showed her no schematics. He simply looked at her with those glowing eyes and spoke.
"The world is ending. You have seen the rifts, the Unwoven, the collapse. There is only one way to stop it. A device—the Reality Manipulation Device, the RMD. It can close the rifts, banish the Unwoven, seal the barriers forever. The knowledge is already inside you. The ritual markings, the experiments, the years of programming—all of it was preparation. You are the only one who can build it. You are the only one who can power it."
"Why are you helping me?" she whispered.
Nezurim smiled—a thin, cold expression. "Because I want to see what you become."
He stood and walked into the shadows.
Netoshka lay in the rubble, her blood freezing on the concrete. The realization hit her like a physical blow. She had spent years hunting Kersnik, hunting revenge, hunting answers. But the answers had been inside her all along. The war would never end unless she ended it—not with bullets, not with knives, but with something bigger. Something that could wound gods.
She forced herself to stand. The rage was still there, but now it had a direction.
───
She traveled north for weeks—through frozen wastelands, ruined cities, territories still contested by the remnants of armies that no longer remembered why they fought. DomiTech Prime was hidden beneath a mountain in the Kaelen Range. Lucretia met her in the command chamber, older and thinner, her eyes hollowed by years of watching the world die.
"You've been gone for five years," Lucretia said coldly. "You went rogue. You killed our operatives. Betrayed me Twice, You disappeared."
"I survived."
"Barely."
"The war is ending," Netoshka said. "Not because anyone won. Because the world is running out of people to fight. But the Unwoven are still here. And they will keep coming unless we stop them."
"What are you talking about?"
"The RMD. Reality Manipulation Device. It can close the rifts, banish the Unwoven, seal the barriers forever."
Lucretia stared at her. "That's impossible. The science doesn't exist."
"It exists inside me. The rituals, the markings, the years of Re-programming—all of it was preparation. I am the key. I can build it."
"You're insane."
"I'm the only chance we have."
Silence. Lucretia paced the room, her boots echoing on the metal floor.
"Even if I believed you, this would take resources we don't have. People we don't have."
"Then we find them. The old world is dead, but survivors remain. Mercenaries, hunters, people who have nothing left to lose. I will build a squad. I will find the components. I will end this."
Lucretia stopped pacing. She turned to face Netoshka, her expression unreadable.
"You really think you can do this."
"I have to."
Another long silence. Then Lucretia nodded slowly.
"Do it. But if you fail—if this is just another suicide mission—I will deny ever knowing you."
Netoshka met her eyes. "You won't have to."
───
The war ended three months later. Not with a treaty, not with a surrender. The great powers simply ran out of soldiers, ammunition, and will. The Tenth Cataclysmic War had burned itself to ash.
But the Unwoven remained. The rifts still scarred the sky. Humanity was not saved; it was merely waiting to die.
Netoshka refused to wait.
She departed DomiTech alone, carrying nothing but her rage and her purpose. Across ruined continents, through burning cities and shattered wastelands, she searched for the first member of what she would call Inferius Squad.
She found him in the highlands of the Mountains, in a survivor fortress.
He was a mercenary: lean, quick, Tall, with sharp eyes and a rifle older than he was. His gear was patched together from half a dozen armies. His name was Taran.
He found her first.
"You're the Glitching Aberration," he said, stepping out from behind a stack of crates. "The one who's been hunting Synarchy across the wastes."
"I've been called that."
"I've been looking for you."
"Why?"
"Because I've heard the rumors. About a device. About a mission to end the rifts across Erythia." He raised his rifle. "But first, I need to know if you're worth following."
She didn't answer with words. She moved.
The fight was short and brutal. He was good—fast, experienced, smart. But she was something else. She had been fighting since childhood, programmed, broken, rebuilt, broken again. He hit the ground hard, his rifle skidding across the ice. She knelt beside him, her knife at his throat.
"You're good," she said.
"I know."
"You're not good enough."
He smiled—a crooked, tired smile.
"Then teach me."
She released him and helped him to her feet.
"You're the first," she said.
"The first what?"
"The first member of my Squad, Inferius."
He picked up his rifle.
"Then I'll make sure you don't die before you find the rest."
───
That night, alone on the fortress wall, Netoshka stared at the stars. The rifts still scarred the sky—jagged wounds that leaked impossible light. The Unwoven still sang in the distance, their frequencies a constant thrum at the edge of awareness.
She thought about Krovka, about Yevgeny, about HIM, who she left to die on that Island.
Watch what I become.
She had said that years ago to a scared Family in a burning village. Now she would become something else: a builder, a leader, a savior.
She made her vow.
"No matter what it costs, no matter what it takes, I will build the RMD. I will close the rifts. I will banish the Unwoven. I will end the suffering of everything that exist on Erythia."
The wind howled across the frozen ramparts. Behind her, inside the fortress, her first recruit was already cleaning his rifle, waiting for whatever came next.
The war was over.
But the real fight had just begun.
───
The Tenth Cataclysmic War had ended. Humanity was broken, scattered, clinging to life in the ruins of a world that had torn itself apart. But Netoshka Nezvany had found a new purpose—not revenge, not survival, but redemption. She had a plan, the knowledge buried in her own blood and bone, and her first recruit.
Inferius Squad was born.
The rifts remained open. The Unwoven still hunted. But for the first time in five years, there was hope.
And hope, she had learned, was the most dangerous weapon of all.