"The bandaids are coming off."

For three seconds, the only sound in the maintenance tunnel was the low hum of Nyx’s defensive drones.

Zen frowned, staring at the flashing red network covering the projected globe. "What bandaids? Be specific, Nyx. What exactly are we looking at?"

Valeria didn’t wait for Nyx to answer.

She stepped closer to the hologram, her golden aura flickering in sudden agitation. "The Empress warned us about this," Valeria said in a tight voice. "During the High Council summit last week."

"Wait," Zen interrupted, raising an eyebrow. "You five actually meet in the same place? I am genuinely surprised you haven’t leveled a continent yet."

"It is a highly encrypted holographic projection," Nyx clarified dryly, not looking up from her data stream. "If we ever shared a physical room, Valeria would attempt to stab someone within four minutes."

Valeria shot Nyx a death glare, but she didn’t actually deny it.

"She’s currently calm because you’re here," Nyx added.

"Don’t take my calmness for weakness, bug," Valeria growled, her hand drifting instinctively toward her sword hilt.

"Enough," Zen cut in.

His voice was sharp, briefly showing his old authority and cutting the tension. He quickly softened his expression and asked what mattered instead. "So what exactly did Aurelia warn about?"

"The Void Singularity," Valeria replied, her red eyes locked on the expanding fractures. "The entity that killed... the entity from five hundred years ago. She said it was beginning to show micro-fractures across the globe. She suggested that all to us begin mobilization."

"She was right about the fractures," Nyx interrupted, her fingers dancing across her gauntlet interface as she zoomed in on the globe. "But she was wrong about the scale."

Nyx swiped her hand, isolating a massive, jagged red line tearing across the map.

"These are no longer micro-fractures," Nyx said grimly. "Minor tears in the spatial fabric are things we can manage. We have been managing the zones for five centuries. But look at the live telemetry, Valeria. The global suppression seal is actively failing. The world isn’t just cracking anymore. It is tearing wide open."

Zen kept his face perfectly blank. On the outside, he looked like someone processing a global tragedy. But on the inside, his mind was moving at a thousand miles an hour.

System, Zen thought. Status of the Void Singularity. Why the sudden spike?

The blue text materialized behind his eyes instantly.

[Warning: Primary Void Anchor destabilized.]

[Cause: Retrieval of Fragment ’Body’ (3.7%).]

[Analysis: When your soul was shattered five centuries ago, the five resulting fragments bonded with your Pillars. This inadvertently created a planetary suppression seal. Your soul is the seal. Every fragment you reclaim weakens the anchors.]

[Conclusion: Reclaiming your full power will result in total global collapse.]

Zen didn’t blink... he didn’t breathe.

The realization hit him like a physical blow to the chest.

To survive the Goddesses and stay out of their golden cages, he needed his soul back.

But if he took his soul back, the Void would consume the planet. The five women whose psychotic obsession he was desperately trying to outrun had accidentally been keeping the world alive just by hoarding his pieces.

If Valeria or Nyx found out that they were the anchors, and that giving his soul back would destroy the world, their yandere instincts would go into overdrive.

They wouldn’t just keep his fragments; they would lock him in a stasis pod at the bottom of the ocean to "protect" him and the realm forever.

"Where is the highest concentration?" Valeria asked, stepping closer to the hologram.

Nyx expanded the globe.

"Sector Four," Nyx said, her tone shifting to deadly serious. "The Aether Domain. The fractures are ripping through the upper atmosphere right beneath the floating city."

Valeria cursed under her breath. "Lyra’s territory."

"The city’s orbit is already decaying," Nyx confirmed, reading the rapidly scrolling data on her visor. "Two point three million citizens are currently being displaced. Lyra is managing the public response and trying to stabilize the gravity engines, but the math is failing."

Nyx swiped a hand through the hologram, bringing up a projected trajectory path. It was a massive, ugly red streak crossing the map.

"If the city falls," Nyx said flatly, "the debris field will cross the continental border directly into Ares territory. It will flatten your western military sectors, Valeria."

Valeria stared at the red trajectory line. Her jaw locked.

"Send your drones," Valeria demanded. "Shoot the debris out of the sky."

"I am a technologist, not a miracle worker," Nyx snapped. "My orbital lasers cannot vaporize two million tons of falling magi-tech steel before it hits the ground. This is a military crisis, Valeria. It requires a Vanguard physical interception on the ground, or your border cities will be wiped off the map."

Valeria looked at the map. Then she turned and looked at Zen.

The conflict in her red eyes was violent. She had promised herself she wouldn’t let him out of her sight. Not after the train incident. Not when he was still recovering.

"I am not leaving him," Valeria stated.

"Don’t be an idiot," Nyx replied. "Millions of your people will die."

"I don’t care about them!" Valeria roared, the golden aura flaring around her shoulders. "I care about him!"

Zen stepped forward, placing a calm hand on Valeria’s armored shoulder. The golden aura instantly dimmed at his touch.

"Valeria," Zen said softly.

She looked at him with wide and slightly desperate eyes. "I just got you back. I am not leaving you in her domain."

"I am not going anywhere," Zen promised, holding her gaze. "But you are the Vanguard Commander. If you let your border fall because you were busy watching me drink coffee in a penthouse, you are not the woman who stood beside me five hundred years ago."

That hit her.

Valeria’s breath hitched. She closed her eyes for a brief second.

When she opened her eyes, the psychotic yandere warmth was gone, replaced by the cold, ruthless stare of the Goddess of War.

"Forty-eight hours," Valeria said.

She turned on Nyx, crossing the distance between them in a single step and grabbing the front of Nyx’s tactical suit. She lifted the Omni Goddess an inch off the floor. Nyx’s drones instantly whined, locking their weapons onto Valeria’s head.

"I will intercept the debris field," Valeria said in a whisper. "But I am coming back in exactly forty-eight hours. If he has a single new scratch on him. If his bioscan drops by a fraction of a percent. If he is not in the exact condition I am leaving him in..."

"I will secure him in the penthouse," Nyx choked out, looking pale but still manage to be defiant at the same time. "He will be safe."

Valeria dropped her.

Valeria didn’t say another word. She simply grabbed Zen by the collar, pulled him toward her, and kissed him deeply. It was a rough, possessive kiss... a clear mark to remind both Zen and Nyx exactly who he belonged to.

"Wait for me," she commanded.

Then she turned and walked down the maintenance tunnel.

Zen and Nyx were left standing alone in the dark.

"Transit pod," Nyx ordered her system, her voice slightly strained as she adjusted her collar. "Penthouse. Direct."

The private magi-tech pod didn’t just go up. It shot horizontally through the city’s underground vacuum-grid at terrifying speeds, crossing sectors in seconds before finally launching vertically into the central spine of her tower.

The ride up was completely silent.

Nyx stood in the corner of the glass elevator, her visor pulled down over her eyes. She wasn’t looking at Zen. She was staring at a rapid stream of data, processing the global crisis.

Zen turned his back to the glass, blocking her line of sight, and pulled his secure terminal from his jacket pocket.

He tapped the screen, opening the ignored message from Jax.

Jax: Zen. Tell me you are still alive.

Jax: The midterm break is boring as hell. Valerius and his Inquisitors are still sniffing around the Scrap Dorms, but they are keeping their distance from the students.

Jax: Kaelen Thorne is throwing his weight around the courtyard with the other Vanguard-track meatheads who stayed behind. Standard annoying stuff.

Jax: Also, did you catch Ghost Scrapper’s latest VOD? The guy is an absolute monster. Link attached. We need to study his movement patterns.

Jax: Seriously though, when are you getting back? And hope you and Val are having a blast? Can’t wait for the deets later.

Zen stared at the screen and suppressed a faint sigh of relief.

The Academy was stable. Valerius hadn’t found anything, Maya was fine, and Jax was clueless enough to send him links to his own streaming videos.

There were no immediate fires to put out back in District 7. He had a few days of breathing room.

The elevator chimed. The doors slid open to the quiet luxury of the penthouse.

Zen slipped the terminal back into his pocket, preparing to finally sit down and deal with the Omni Goddess.

But Nyx didn’t step out of the elevator.

Zen stopped and turned around.

Nyx was standing perfectly still inside the glass box. Her visor slowly retracted into her headpiece. Her purple eyes were fixed on him, and there was absolutely no warmth in them.

With a slow flick of her wrist, she projected the globe into the center of the penthouse living room.

But this time, the globe had a timeline attached to it. A massive, glowing graph hovering directly above the red fractures.

"The global degradation did not happen gradually," Nyx said. The silence of the penthouse made her cold, dangerously quiet voice echo. "It was a sudden, violent spike. A mathematical impossibility unless triggered by a massive shift in S-Rank mana."

She finally stepped out of the elevator. The doors slid closed behind her, sealing them in.

"I ran the timestamp," Nyx continued, her eyes never leaving his face. "The exact moment the Void anchors destabilized across all five continents was 04:12 AM last night."

Zen’s blood went freezing cold.

04:12 AM.

There was no Valeria here to jump in front of him. No Vanguard army to distract her. Just him, a supercomputer Goddess, and a mathematical equation that pointed directly at his chest.

Nyx narrowed her glowing purple eyes, taking a slow step closer to him.

"My visual feeds in your suite experienced a localized blackout for exactly one hundred and twenty seconds at 04:12 AM," Nyx whispered softly. "I assumed Valeria was simply destroying my cameras for privacy. But the math says otherwise."

She stopped just inches from him, looking up into his eyes.

"Tell me, Zen," she said, her voice dropping to a terrifying purr. "What exactly were you hiding in the dark?"