Wolfen and Prime 10 stood across from each other. The corridor between them was empty, the walls cracked, the floor littered with debris from the chaos above. Neither moved. Neither spoke.
They vanished.
The space between them ceased to exist. Wolfen's fist found empty air. Prime 10's blade passed through where his head had been. They reappeared on opposite sides of the room, turned, and moved again.
Wolfen's chest opened.
A long slash, clean and deep, ran from his shoulder to his ribs. Blood welled, steamed, healed. He turned. She was already behind him.
"Dominance Sphere."
Fire erupted from Wolfen's body, expanding outward, consuming the corridor. The heat was unbearable, the light blinding. Prime 10 raised her hand.
"Dominance Sphere."
Black met red.
Her sphere pushed against his, a void of cold and silence pressing into the inferno. The walls between them cracked, melted, ceased to exist. The floor buckled. The ceiling collapsed.
They held.
Pulse Amplification. Wolfen's fire burned hotter, brighter, more. Prime 10's void deepened, widened, consumed.
"Dominance Rejection."
Wolfen pushed his sphere into hers, tried to break it, to shatter it, to win. She pushed back. The spheres ground against each other, neither giving, neither breaking.
He changed the fire.
Solar lava—the fire from the other universe, the fire that had melted mountains, the fire that was not meant for this world—erupted from his hands. The heat was beyond anything. The light was unbearable.
Prime 10 raised her hand. A black hole formed in her palm—not the small spheres she'd used before, but something larger, something that drank light and sound and heat.
The solar lava met the void.
The explosion was silent. The light was absolute. When it faded, they stood in a crater that had been a corridor, their clothes burned, their bodies smoking.
Prime 10's gloves were gone. Her hands were bare.
Wolfen saw them. The fingers, the palm, the wrist—and the scar. The small scar he'd seen before, the one he'd known, the one he'd made.
He stopped.
"Having fun being an Architect?" His voice was quiet. Not angry. Not cold. Just... tired.
Prime 10's mask was half-destroyed. The left side hung in pieces, exposing her eye, her cheek, her hair. She didn't move to hide it.
"None of this is fun."
"Oh yeah?" Wolfen took a step forward. "Yet here you are. Kicking my ass."
She didn't answer.
"Why, Alina?" His voice cracked. Just once. "Why?"
She was silent for a long moment. Her eye—her one visible eye—was wet.
"To protect."
"But here you are." He gestured at the destruction, the fire, the bodies. "Hurting me. Hurting everyone."
"You're doing the same."
"No. I'm ending it."
Her eye closed. When it opened, it was steady.
"Your mind games won't work, Wolfen."
"I know." He smiled—the old smile, the one that meant nothing and everything. "But they used to."
She looked at him. At the brother she'd lost, the brother she'd found, the brother she was supposed to destroy.
"I'll find you later," she said.
"There won't be a later."
She vanished.
Wolfen stood in the crater, his hands empty, his fire dying, his chest aching in a way that had nothing to do with wounds. He looked at the spot where she'd been. At the burned glove on the floor. At the scar on her hand that he'd made when they were children, before the world ended, before everything.
He turned and walked away.
The Pulse signatures from his friends were close. They were alive. They were waiting. He would find them, and they would leave this place, and he would never tell them what he'd found.
His sister was an Architect. And she was still trying to protect him.