The planet groaned as it was slowly devoured. Entire continents sagged under the weight of the creeping black gunk, and the Tartarusios cut through the murky sky with searchlights stabbing downward, looking for whatever remained of the Titans.
Below them spread the former Basin of Trass — now a churning mire of dark sludge swallowing the ground by the meter. The scout feed flickered as the ship passed over the submerged plains. Half-sunken silhouettes of broken orbiton frames jutted out like the bones of drowned giants.
Then the spotlight caught something massive.
Marek's Titan.
Half of its body was already gone beneath the gunk, only its chest, left shoulder, and head still visible. Black fluid pulsed around the cockpit housing, rising toward the crown of the orbiton's skull.
"OI — GET THE RETRIEVAL SHUTTLE DOWN THERE!" Oscar barked, gripping the railing. "NOW—GO!"
The odds were almost nonexistent. No one stayed alive inside a drowning Titan. The gunk seeped through anything, ate anything, suffocated everything.
But when the shuttle made contact, when the rescue frame cracked open Marek's cockpit…
The kid coughed.
He was alive.
Barely — soaked in coolant and sweat, drifting in and out of consciousness — but alive. His cockpit seal had held just long enough, the pressure locks jamming shut before the gunk could get in. A miracle in a graveyard.
Sergio, however…
His Titan lay shattered across a jagged rock spire like a broken doll. Limbs torn apart. Torso split. The cockpit crushed under the weight of fallen debris. When they found him, there was nothing to save. A gruesome end — but one rooted in bravery, in defiance.
Preston and Alex were worse off. Their Titans no longer existed as machines — only as distant, fading signals swallowed long ago beneath the black tide. Their final moments unknown, lost. Just two more young pilots who reached too far for glory.
Tom, somehow, clung to life. His Titan was little more than a skeleton of cables and exposed servos, almost entirely devoured but refusing to collapse. Tom hung inside it unconscious, kept alive by failing emergency systems.
Three boys gone in a single strike.Three bright sparks smothered.
Oscar stared at the display. His chest felt tight. His jaw trembled.
These were his crew. His responsibility.
With a heavy heart, Oscar turned toward the open mic. Every soul on the Tartarusios heard his voice.
"My friends… we will get out of this. I promise — on the souls of those who died today."
And with that vow, the Tartarusios angled upward and ascended out of the dying sky.
Above the planet, the battle raged like a war between dying stars. Altopereh's shadow stretched across the orbit, its form swelling, cracking, pulsing with dark pressure. Perciosa was nearly crushed — pinned in a tightening cocoon of black gunk, the orbiton's frame groaning as if bones were snapping.
Anemone's breaths were shallow. Her vision blurred. Perciosa's voice echoed faintly in her cockpit.
"Anemone… stay awake…"
Then—
A blinding beam erupted from the clouds below — a lance of pure energy slicing the darkness apart. It slammed into Altopereh's side, blowing away the gunk and freeing Perciosa in a violent burst that shook the entire orbit.
Perciosa drifted, broken. Armor plates dangling. Wings half melted. Circuits exposed and sparking.
Inside, Anemone exhaled shakily, skin pale, blood dripping down her neck.
"I see… alright then… go crazy," she whispered hoarsely. "And don't you dare lose…"
Her hand fell away from the controls.
Something answered her.
The core of Perciosa twisted — matter cracking, folding, rearranging. Bones materialized from thin air, erupting outward like white-hot spines. A ribcage snapped into shape around the orbiton's core. The torso stretched unnaturally — joints elongating, limbs thinning until they resembled talons.
Tendrils spilled from its back like writhing shadows.
Horns grew like branching antlers, sharp and chaotic.
Perciosa's true form awakened — the ancient monster that powered the machine finally unbound.
Across from it, Sirius materialized in a shimmer of blue distortion, joining the standoff.
Three monsters.Three gods.
Altopereh threw back its head and laughed — a hollow, resonant sound that vibrated metal.
"At last… the real fun begins."
Its arms spread.
Black bubbles of condensed gunk formed in clusters, hundreds at once, then shot forth like artillery shells.
Perciosa didn't flinch. A pulse of subsonic force rippled from her chest — a vibrational shockwave so sharp the bubbles liquefied mid-flight and evaporated into empty mist.
Sirius lifted a hand, inertia rippling around him. The rest of the projectiles froze, slowed, then collapsed under their own halted momentum.
Sirius smirked.
"Still a loose cannon, huh? You shouldn't have killed my vessel. Plenty of him was usable — at least until you punched through him."
Altopereh sneered.
"You call that weakling a vessel? I'd rather rot in my core for millennia than inhabit such pathetic flesh."
It lunged.
Claws extended. Tendrils whipping. The stars themselves warping in its wake.
Sirius blurred aside, hurling meteoric debris — hundreds of torn-up asteroid fragments and dead satellites — into Altopereh from multiple vectors. The barrage struck like a meteor storm, ripping chunks of gunk out of its body.
The holes healed instantly.
Altopereh twisted to strike — only for Perciosa to materialize in front of it, claws drawn back.
A killing blow.
But Altopereh's Tendrils snapped outward, wrapping around Perciosa's arm and swallowing it whole before it could make contact. The limb dissolved into the mass.
Perciosa recoiled — her arm now severed.
But before the stump could drip, new bone sprouted. Flesh knitted. Metal and sinew wove together. The limb regenerated fully in seconds.
Altopereh laughed again.
"Come on… how low have you fallen? Taking orders from mortals? Join me. Let's reclaim this world the way we did in the old days."
A hiss escaped Perciosa.
"You fool. You can't maintain this form for long. Once your vessel dies, you'll collapse back to your core. Those old days are gone. Blame the Sacros."
Sirius added dryly:
"For what it's worth, I liked my vessel. So I'll be killing yours as payback."
Sirius lunged.
His turquoise veins blazed, glowing brighter and brighter until a massive sphere of energy formed in front of his chest. He fired the beam — a column of annihilation tearing across the void.
Altopereh darted upward just in time, the beam grazing its torso. But before it could retaliate, Perciosa was already above, wings flaring.
She unleashed a supersonic wave.
The blast hit Altopereh like a fist of thunder. The god tumbled downward — plummeting toward the planet — but stopped itself with a violent jerk just before breaching the atmosphere.
Altopereh rose again, floating before them, cracking its neck with a slow, confident tilt.
"Do you remember why they called me the Vanisher?"
Sirius and Perciosa tensed.
Altopereh extended a single finger.
"You know what my body is made of. Antimatter itself. This world—already drenched in it."
The air in orbit fractured.Space cracked like glass.A curtain of white-void antimatter poured downward.
"I vanished things by engulfing them. And now you're already inside the field."
The fabric of space descended on Sirius and Perciosa, washing over them like a slow tidal wave. The Rozasar fleet, positioned farther away, screamed through comms as the antimatter tide reached them.
Ships dissolved one by one — warping, bending, collapsing inward silently.Less than twenty remained.Numbers dropping.
Leonora pushed her engines to maximum, Rozasar hull plates shaking as she prepared to enter the fight.
Everything felt moments away from extinction.
Then—
The antimatter stopped.
Completely.
The gunk choking the fleet froze mid-flow.The tide around Sirius and Perciosa halted.And Altopereh shuddered.
Pieces of its body crumbled away — dissolving, evaporating — revealing metal beneath.
The black hue stripped itself from him like burning paper caught in reverse.
Altopereh glanced down at itself in confusion.Then at Sirius and Perciosa.Then laughed — a low, fading echo.
"Better luck next time… I guess."
The last of the antimatter shell evaporated.
And the ancient orbiton — Altopereh — stood revealed in full before the two monsters.