The first Witch's appearance was less a movement and more a violation. Reality bent inward on itself with a wet, tearing sound, and suddenly it was there, as if space had simply decided to vomit it into existence. The air around the breach shimmered with black static, and Emma felt her inner ear lurch as gravity twisted in directions that shouldn't exist.
"What the hell—" Lucas started, but his words were cut off as a dozen more tears opened across the crystalline meadow.
They didn't emerge from the rifts so much as reality spat them out in bursts of dimensional nausea. Each appearance brought a miniature earthquake, a violent lurch that made Emma's teeth rattle and her vision blur. The Witches moved with a stuttering, impossible speed that hurt to track, their forms flickering between states of existence like broken holograms.
[Power Intro: Titan Chaos - Shiftis]
The nearest Witch tilted its featureless mask toward Lucas and simply was beside him, bypassing the space between in a way that made Emma's enhanced senses rebel. Lucas, battle-hardened and quick, swung a massive fist wreathed in kinetic energy.
[Kineticvance - 8,000 Tons Impact Force]
The punch connected with a sound like thunder splitting stone, and the Witch's form dissipated like smoke touched by wind. For a heartbeat, Lucas grinned in triumph.
Then it reformed directly behind him, its negation claws already reaching for his spine.
"Lucas!" Aisha's warning came a split second before Emma tackled him aside, her 25% enhancement making her fast enough to intervene. The claws passed through the space where Lucas had been standing, and the air itself screamed, reality bending away from the touch of pure un-being.
The First Facet was coming apart around them. The perfect crystalline structures that had stood for eons began to crack and crumble, their geometric precision failing as the Witches' presence infected the construct's fundamental stability. What had been paradise moments before was becoming a kaleidoscope of falling light and shattering dreams.
"The whole place is collapsing!" Gray shouted over the growing cacophony of breaking crystal and tearing space. His scanner was going haywire, displaying readings that fluctuated between impossibly high energy signatures and complete voids where reality simply refused to register.
More Witches poured through the expanding rifts, their forms a nauseating display of existence in flux. They moved in patterns that defied tracking, appearing and disappearing with violent lurches that made the ground buckle and the air taste of copper and ozone.
Chloe, ever the fighter, charged the nearest cluster of enemies. Her fists blazed with destructive force as she aimed a devastating uppercut at a Witch that had materialized too close to Gray's position.
[Kineticvance - Forcevance - 6,000 Tons Directed Impact]
The punch should have atomized anything it touched. Instead, the Witch simply reached out with one impossibly elongated arm, its negation claw brushing against Chloe's armored torso.
[Power Intro: Titan Chaos - Negation]
What happened next would haunt Emma's dreams. Chloe's armor didn't dent or crack. It didn't even break. It simply ceased. The advanced composite material that had protected her through countless battles unraveled into black, hissing static that spread across her chest like acid. But this wasn't destruction in any recognizable sense; it was unmaking, as if the fundamental concept of "Chloe's armor" had been edited out of reality.
The negation spread to her flesh beneath, and where it touched, her body didn't bleed or tear. It dissolved into the same crackling void, revealing glimpses of bone and organs that flickered between existing and not existing. The air around the wound screamed, a sound that bypassed the ears and struck directly at the part of the brain that understood visceral horror.
Chloe's own scream joined the chorus, a sound of pain so profound and alien that it seemed to echo from dimensions beyond counting. She staggered backward, clutching at a wound that was simultaneously there and not there, her face a mask of shock and agony.
"Chloe!" Emma's cry tore from her throat as something fundamental ignited in her chest. The WoodDust in her cells, already enhanced to 25%, suddenly blazed with desperate fury.
[Power Intro: Stormgleam - Purity Blast Level 1]
Golden light erupted from Emma's hands, not the controlled glow of her usual abilities but a raw, desperate blast of pure WoodDust energy. It was instinctive, primal, the power responding not to technique but to absolute need. The beam struck the Witch that had wounded Chloe, and unlike the ineffective physical attacks, this scoured it.
The creature's form wavered, its static-filled essence recoiling from the touch of organized energy. Where the golden light made contact, the Witch's chaotic nature was forced into painful cohesion, its flickering existence stabilizing long enough for it to experience something like agony. It Shifted away with a sound like reality vomiting.
[Auren: New Skill Unlocked - Stormgleam: Purity Blast Level 1! Effect: Forces chaotic entities into temporary corporeal state. Warning: High energy consumption!]
Emma barely registered Auren's announcement as another Witch materialized directly in front of her, its mask-like face tilting with predatory interest. This time, she didn't hesitate. As it began to Shift toward her, she reached out and grabbed it mid-phase.
The contact was like plunging her hand into liquid nitrogen filled with broken glass and screaming static. The Witch's essence was absolute cold andbuzzing emptiness, a sensation that made every nerve in her body fire at once while simultaneously going numb. It was the feeling of touching the space between atoms, the void that existed in the gaps of reality.
But Emma held on, her enhanced strength allowing her to grip something that shouldn't be grippable. The Witch's form solidified in her grasp, its chaotic nature forced into temporary stability by her touch. She could feel it struggling, its very existence offended by the concept of being held, being real.
[Kineticvance - Crushing Force - 12,000 Tons]
She squeezed, and the Witch collapsed inward like a house of cards made of screaming static. Its destruction sent a shockwave through the local reality, and suddenly Emma felt something new ignite in her chest, a warmth that spread through her entire body.
[Power Intro: Starvox - Flight System Activated]
Golden light blazed around her as gravitational fields bent to her will. Her feet left the ground in a flare of controlled energy, her body rising with a grace that felt as natural as breathing. The sensation was intoxicating, liberating, but Auren's voice cut through her wonder with urgent warnings.
[Flight System: Activated! Stability: 19%. Duration: Limited! Warning: Novice pilot! Crash probability: High!]
Emma wobbled in the air, her untrained flight systems struggling to maintain equilibrium. But even unstable flight was enough to give her a tactical advantage as more Witches converged on their position.
"Emma!" Markus called from below, where he was helping support the wounded Chloe. "Whatever you're going to do, do it fast!"
The entire First Facet was disintegrating now, the beautiful crystalline meadow collapsing into fragments that fell not down but through, disappearing into rifts that led to places Emma's mind refused to fully process. Through the largest tear, she could see their destination: a realm of floating bone islands under a starless sky, where storms of living crystal shrieked through the void.
That's when she felt it.
A presence so vast and terrible that her newly awakened flight systems nearly failed from the psychic weight alone. From the largest rift, something descended that made the Witches look like pale imitations of horror.
Sylvara arrived first, her form blazing with light that hurt to look at directly. Where the Witches brought chaos and negation, she radiated Order in its most absolute form.
[Power Intro: Divinecrest - Order Manifestation]
Her golden light didn't just illuminate; it defined. Where her aura touched the writhing chaos of the Witch assault, reality snapped back into focus with an almost audible click. The static-filled air became clear, the impossible angles straightened into geometry that human minds could process. Several Witches recoiled from her presence, their chaotic forms unable to maintain cohesion in the face of such organized power.
"Mortals," Sylvara's voice carried the weight of eons, beautiful and terrible. "You have walked into something far beyond your comprehension."
But even as she spoke, another presence made itself known, and this one sent ice through Emma's enhanced nerves.
Corrupted Emma descended through the rift like a fallen angel, her form a nightmarish mirror of everything Emma feared she might become. The resemblance was undeniable and horrifying: her face, her build, even her movements, but all wrong, all twisted.
[Power Intro: Soulspire - Necrospire Aura]
A wave of tangible despair rolled off the corrupted version, a death-energy so profound that it made the air itself feel heavy and stale. Where Sylvara's presence brought clarity, this creature brought the suffocating weight of entropy, of hope abandoned and dreams rotting. Emma felt it wash over her like a tide of liquid darkness, and for a moment, her flight systems faltered as her will to continue simply... diminished.
The golden tree of her Questmind interface flickered and sparked, Auren's voice strained with something approaching panic:
[CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED! TITAN-CLASS ENTITY! NECROSPIRE SIGNATURE: MAXIMUM! CHAOS MAGIC LEVEL: ERROR - SCAN FAILED! EMMA - IMMEDIATE EVACUATION REQUIRED!]
Corrupted Emma's eyes locked onto hers across the chaos of the battlefield, and Emma saw something in that gaze that froze her blood. Recognition. Hunger. And underneath it all, a terrible, broken sadness that spoke of choices made and innocence lost.
"Hello, sister," the twisted version spoke, and her voice was Emma's voice, but hollow, empty of everything that made Emma herself. "Did you miss me?"
The ground beneath them gave a final, shuddering crack, and the last supports of The First Facet's reality collapsed entirely. The rift widened into a maw that could swallow starships, and Emma felt the inexorable pull of gravitational forces beyond her control.
Sylvara's order-light flared desperately, trying to maintain some semblance of stability, but even her ancient power couldn't hold back the tide of unmaking that poured through the breach. The Witches swarmed around them like carrion birds, their forms growing more solid and terrible as they fed on the ambient chaos.
Emma tried to grab her teammates, her unstable flight allowing her to reach for Lucas and Markus, but the gravitational distortion was too strong, the pull too absolute.
They fell.
Through layers of reality, through the screaming void between dimensions, into a realm where bone mountains floated in starless night and storms of living crystal hunted anything that dared to exist. The Dominion swallowed them whole, and as Emma tumbled through the crushing darkness, she heard Corrupted Emma's laughter echoing from every direction at once.
The hunt had begun.