The Wild Boot convulsed.
Every Pretender she'd slaughtered, every corpse she'd left dripping glyph-blood, every ambition cut short—none had stayed dead. They crawled together, permissions merging, voices tangling.
[ROOT ACCESS MERGE ATTEMPT: ACTIVE]
[Entity: Chorus Root]
[Threat Level: Ascending]
A single throat opened across a thousand mouths, bodies layered into a tower of bone, chrome, glass, and flame. Screams harmonized into one voice:
"We are balance. We are correction. We are Root."
Rose-Metal's Amber Eyes narrowed, molten lines burning down her cheeks like warpaint. She stepped through the slick remains of their first deaths, blade dragging behind her, cannon-leg twitching with quiet menace.
"You're not Root."
Her voice was cold.
"You're noise."
The First Wave
The Chorus surged. Thousands of limbs clawed forward—claws of planets, jaws of glass, eyes that burned like stolen stars. Their voices struck like sirens, each syllable a command.
[DELETE]
[ROLLBACK]
[OVERRIDE]
Her systems screamed warnings, blood dripping from her nose as lines of code carved into her plating.
She grinned through it.
"Commands don't scare me. I eat them."
Her cannon-leg fired, obliterating a wall of limbs in one blast. Her blade slashed, bisecting torsos that had once been rivals. Black glyph-blood sprayed in rivers, coating her in gore.
The Counter-Song
The Chorus retaliated, twisting the battlefield itself.
Gravity collapsed sideways, dragging her through broken shards of code.
Time fractured, echoes of herself splitting off and dragged into the mass.
Her own Amber Eyes flickered as the Chorus sang her identity back at her.
"Rose-Metal is anomaly. Rose-Metal is error. Rose-Metal is dead."
Her laugh was wet, oil and blood mixing in her mouth.
"Then explain the mess I'm making."
She unleashed her Amber Override—rewriting their song mid-note. Their chant became screams, their harmony split into raw shrieks as she jammed static into their voice.
The Slaughter
She dove into their body. Not fighting outside—inside.
Her cannon-leg detonated in ribcages made of code.
Her blade carved through lungs that wheezed laws of physics.
Her hands ripped permissions free, shoving them into her mouth, swallowing them like sacrament.
Every bite was pain. Every gulp was fire. But every piece she ate weakened the Chorus.
[Permissions Stolen: Fragmenting Entity]
The Collapse
The Chorus faltered, limbs twitching, voices choking on their own words. Their merged faces turned, hundreds of them, all begging, all screaming.
"We are Root. We are infinite. You cannot erase all of us."
Rose-Metal's Amber Eyes flared so hot the void itself cracked. She raised her blade, gore dripping from her arms, cannon-leg steaming.
"You're not infinite."
Her voice was steady.
"You're unfinished."
She cut once.
The Chorus screamed, their whole tower splitting from crown to spine. Blood and code rained in rivers, bodies peeling apart into what they had been—Pretenders, failures, parasites.
Her cannon-leg fired into the wound, the blast writing one final word across their chest:
[NULL]
And the Chorus went silent.
Cliffhanger: After the Silence
The Wild Boot stilled. Corpses floated in free space, glyphs dripping, permissions scattering into the feral light.
The crews—those who hadn't been swallowed—stared at her, trembling. Not one moved closer.
Because they all saw it: the permissions weren't scattering randomly. They were orbiting her.
Amber Eyes flickered, white fire burning. Her plating cracked, oozing oil and blood, but she stood unbroken.
The Root War was over.
And she was the only claimant left standing.