"Get out of the way. I'll kill you all. Don't block the way."

The man who shouted it ran like his lungs were on fire. Petrus, owner of Ledgegrove Bazaar, the one who had fed that monster and skimmed its Vision Crystals like cream off milk.

Those crystals had carried him from a young alchemy aspirant to a master.

Magnate was not a stretch. He had climbed in a decade and a half, and he had stepped on enough hands to keep his boots clean.

Now he was sprinting out of Spendworth Hills, fresh from a meeting with the other city owners, trying to reach the broken summit before the last nail went in.

He did not make it to the edge before two figures blocked him.

Corneal, owner of Spendworth Hills, stood planted like a gate with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

Theo of Silvertoll Summits leaned beside him, rolling his shoulders, knuckles already flexing like he was warming up.

"I. I. I can explain everything. It wasn't my doing," Petrus pleaded.

"Explain it to the masked men over there. Come with us peacefully," Theo said, and cracked his knuckles like punctuation.

"Calm down, Petrus. If you really have no fault in this, then we'll help you clear your name," Corneal said, his voice mild.

Petrus heard the words and tasted the lie in them. The fault was his. He was aware enough to know that miraculous creatures did not appear in this world and start producing medicine effects for free.

They took a step closer. Petrus's face warped. Rage and fear fought over the same muscle.

"Don't come any closer. I'll fucking kill you both."

Corneal moved first. Too fast. A knuckle duster drove into Petrus's gut with a dull crack.

Petrus folded like a shrimp, all breath leaving him in one ugly cough. He was no fighter.

Papers slid. Books thumped open. Glass clinked and rolled. A few elixirs shattered.

He skidded away, his body smashing through a few dozen shops before it stopped.

Petrus lay there and understood the ending. They would peel him open for information. Not with blades first. With arts.

With soul work. He was not a child. He had always known this path ended in a ditch.

Desperation found his hand before dignity did.

He grabbed a Vision Crystal from his scattered things. It was different from the common cuts.

Walnut shaped, warm to the touch. Veins ran through it that beat and pulsed like a living throat.

No other choice remained. He swallowed it.

Power surged up his spine like a scream. Petrus arched and roared, and the sound carried wrong harmonics, like two voices trying to occupy one mouth.

"I can feel the power within."

His skin tightened. Bones shifted. Breath turned thick. Something inside him unlatched.

A new Aberrant was born in the space where an alchemist had been.

Petrus's mind flooded with memories that were not the farmer's lie, not the king's delusion. These were the older instructions.

Combat styles absorbed from victims. The knack of steering the masses, of tugging at the people with Vision Crystals lodged in their bodies like hooks.

He felt them. Thousands. Cures sold through Goldkeep Crownmarkets. He felt the living map of it in his nerves.

Corneal and Theo saw the change. They ran. Others ran with them.

Panic spread faster than any shouted warning. A crowd that had been watching for justice turned into a herd smelling fire.

Petrus did not chase. He fled, and as he fled, he spilled Vision Crystal mist from his body like fog rolling off a bog.

It drifted and clung. It sank into lungs and pores. Wherever it touched, hybrids spawned.

The window was short. The result was not.

In moments, almost twenty thousand hybrids existed where there had been people. All of them at the gilded core stage.

From afar, Radeon watched the chaos flower and did not flinch.

This was what he needed. He did not care about strangers he had never spoken to. He did not have the habit of saving everyone.

Calyx recovered in that brief lull. He looked toward the auction houses and pointed. Radeon nodded once.

The ghosts and wraiths moved through the underground channels they had dug.

Silent Severance teams split as they reacted to the new disaster, masks snapping toward the roaring streets.

Elemental conjurers arrived first at the edge of the panic, hands already glowing. It did not matter.

Petrus was faster. He was already far, already seeding the next wave.

Below ground, Calyx reached the vaults of Spendworth Hills, the routes prepared beforehand. The ghost army went on the offensive.

Dust and debris exploded up as steel and concrete gave way from beneath. Alarms blared, shrill and constant.

Above ground, some living fools heard the pounding and thought of loot. They rushed toward the noise, eager to steal while everyone else bled.

The ghosts heard them coming through the stone, and kept moving anyway.

But no one had time to care. Corneal was busy running for his life.

For people fleeing hybrids, the vault alarm was only another noise in a world full of screams.

Inside were ores, weapons, pills, herbs, maps, old relics. Wealth stacked like kindling.

The holes were dug again, clean exits, and the ghosts began to carry.

As Petrus's power climbed, the other Aberrant felt it.

Even pinned to the throne, even drained by crystal and cyan seals, it sensed the same signature in the world where it felt too unique.

Not an ally. Not a stranger. Its other half. A matching hunger. A mirror that made its instincts wake up sharp and frightened.

It knew then. It was done for. With what little energy remained, it forced a desperate cry through a throat full of ice and bloodless breath.

The sound tore the air, and the body followed it, collapsing outward.

It did not fall apart like meat. It turned to dust.

Fine, pale grit burst from its skin and seams, so small it looked like nothing at all.

In the heart of that dissolving, a single piece held shape. A walnut sized half core, slick and dark, shot out like a bullet.

Silent Severance saw it.

Masks turned. Hands snapped up. Elemental qi caged the air where it flew, lightning and frost and pressure locking down space itself.

For a heartbeat the half core hung there.

Then it vanished. Not in a flash. Not in a burst. It simply was not where it had been.

The dust kept moving. It spread fast, carried by the wind. It left no spiritual trace. No residual energy.

Nothing a Diviner could hook a reading onto. It was not a beast fleeing. It was a contaminant.

The cities had their barriers erected for sudden invasion. Walls of qi and stone and runes raised to stop armies and flying horrors.

Dust was neither. The wind blew. And what slipped through was too small for the eye.

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