Her veins throbbed with blinding, brilliant golden light that shined clearly through her pale skin and charred overalls. Every breath she took exhaled a mist of shimmering, golden steam that sizzled as it hit the cool air of the basement.
She took a slow, heavy step forward.
*CRACK.*
The solid, runic-carved obsidian floor instantly spider-webbed beneath her simple leather boot. The sheer, impossible mass of holding an entire planet’s leyline inside a human body was actively breaking the localized physics engine around her.
"Boss... please," Wraith begged.
The Level 25 Assassin was pressed flat against the wall, shielding his face from the intense, scorching heat radiating off her body. His raspy voice was entirely stripped of its usual cool professionalism. He sounded like a terrified child.
"You have to spit it out. You have to put the Core back!" Wraith yelled over the low, vibrating hum of her newly acquired power. "You’re burning alive! Your HP is literally dropping in real-time! If you try to walk out of this bunker, you’re going to turn into a pile of radioactive ash!"
"I’m not putting it back, Wraith," Valerie replied.
Her voice didn’t sound human anymore. It echoed with a deep, resonant, multi-layered acoustic pressure that vibrated the loose screws on Galleon’s workbench. It was the voice of a woman who had just swallowed a star.
She didn’t stop to argue. She turned her back on the ruined command center and began walking toward the heavy, twisted metal stairs that led up to the surface.
"Valerie, listen to reason!" Galleon shouted, his dwarven pride entirely shattered by the sheer stupidity of her plan. He scrambled out from behind a stack of crates, pointing a soot-stained finger at her. "Sebastian is fighting a multiversal wipe! He’s fighting the Genesis Protocol! Even if you bring him the Core, you can’t reach him! He’s floating in the Juncture! It’s a dead vacuum! A human body cannot survive in space for more than ten seconds without exploding!"
Valerie paused at the base of the stairs. She didn’t turn around.
"I don’t need to survive for a long time, Galleon," Valerie stated, her golden eyes staring up the dark stairwell. "I just need to survive long enough to hand him the battery. I can hold my breath."
She gripped the rusted iron handrail. The metal instantly glowed cherry-red and melted into slag beneath her glowing fingers, dripping uselessly onto the concrete.
"Fuck the handrail," Valerie grumbled, her corporate, sarcastic humor making a brief, completely absurd appearance. "I really missed having a decent carb-heavy breakfast before deciding to do something this incredibly suicidal."
She started climbing.
Every step she took left a glowing, scorched footprint melted deep into the steel stairs. Her body felt impossibly heavy. The pain was absolute torture. It felt like she had swallowed a bucket of broken glass and lit kerosene. The planetary mana was actively trying to tear her fragile human cells apart, desperate to escape the tiny, biological cage she had forced it into.
Wraith and Galleon followed her, keeping a safe distance of twenty feet to avoid the blistering heat wave rolling off her back. They didn’t try to physically stop her. They knew it was entirely useless. When Valerie made up her mind, she was an immovable object.
They reached the top of the stairwell and pushed through the heavy, battered surface doors.
Valerie stepped out into the ruined industrial district of Earth.
It was a beautiful, haunting scene. The towering, rusted factories and collapsed apartment buildings of the old world were bathed in a warm, pristine light. High above the city, stretching across the entire sky, was the magnificent, impenetrable golden dome of the Sovereign’s Aegis. Sebastian’s firewall was holding perfectly, isolating the planet from the horrors of the void.
The streets were not empty.
Thousands of survivors—the ragged, starving refugees, the heavily armored Warlords who had lost their magic, and the exhausted Sanctuary guards—were gathered in the rubble. They were staring up at the clear blue sky, weeping, laughing, and holding each other. They thought the nightmare was finally over.
Then, they saw her.
The crowd went completely silent. Thousands of eyes turned to stare at the woman walking out of the Citadel bunker. She looked like a walking, bleeding sun. Her clothes were smoking, and bright golden light poured from her eyes and veins, casting long, sharp shadows across the ruined asphalt.
"Is that... the Guild Master?" a low-level scavenger whispered, dropping his rusted iron pipe in sheer awe.
Valerie ignored the crowd. She didn’t offer a speech about hope or survival. She didn’t have the time or the breath to waste. She walked to the absolute center of the main courtyard, stopping right beneath the highest point of the golden dome.
She tilted her head back, staring up at the sky.
"He’s out there," Valerie whispered to herself. She could feel him. The raw, infinite mana inside her chest recognized its creator. She could feel the massive, terrifying shadow of Sebastian standing millions of miles away, actively letting himself be erased to keep this tiny, insignificant bubble safe.
Wraith stepped out of the bunker doors, followed closely by Galleon. The Assassin ran forward, stopping just at the edge of her agonizing heat radius.
"Boss," Wraith pleaded one last time, his raspy voice breaking entirely. He dropped to his knees on the cracked asphalt. The cold, ruthless killer looked up at her, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "Please. He gave us this safe zone. He told me to protect you. If you break that barrier, you are walking into permanent deletion. You won’t respawn. We can’t bring you back this time."
Valerie looked down at the kneeling Assassin. The blinding gold light in her eyes softened just a fraction.
"I know, Wraith," Valerie said gently, her voice vibrating the broken concrete around them. "You did a good job. You kept me safe. But he didn’t build this safe zone for himself. He built it for us."
She slowly turned her gaze back up to the impenetrable golden sky.
"He fought the gods for me," Valerie declared, her voice rising in volume, echoing across the silent, ruined city for every single survivor to hear. "He went into the dark and broke the universe so we could see the sun. He is out there right now, bleeding out, thinking he has to die alone to keep the door locked."
She raised both of her hands, aiming them directly at the absolute center of the golden firewall overhead. The veins in her arms bulged, glowing so bright they were almost entirely transparent.
"I am not letting him die alone," Valerie snarled, pure, unadulterated human spite fueling her final act. "I can give him a planet."
Valerie didn’t cast a spell. She didn’t use a magical incantation. She engaged the absolute, localized authority of the Sanctuary Core she had swallowed.
She thrust her glowing hands upward, as if grabbing an invisible curtain.
"OPEN!" Valerie roared.
She violently ripped her hands apart.
*KRA-DOOOOOOM!*
The sound was apocalyptic. The impenetrable, flawless golden barrier of the Sovereign’s Aegis—the ultimate firewall that had severed Earth from the multiverse—violently groaned.
Right above Valerie, the golden sky physically buckled. A massive, jagged black tear ripped open in the center of the dome.
It didn’t look like a neat, magical portal. It looked like a horrific, bleeding wound in the fabric of the atmosphere. The edges of the rift sparked with chaotic red error codes and blinding green static.
Through the massive, mile-wide tear in the sky, the comforting blue atmosphere of Earth vanished. In its place was the absolute, terrifying, pitch-black nothingness of the Juncture.
The vacuum of space instantly howled, desperately trying to suck the oxygen out of the city.
Valerie didn’t flinch. The heat radiating off her body reached its absolute, catastrophic peak. Her physical rendering began to fray, tiny flakes of golden ash peeling off her skin and floating upward into the void.
"I’m coming, Seattle," Valerie whispered, her golden eyes locking onto the dark abyss.
She bent her knees, the concrete entirely shattering beneath her boots. With a final, explosive burst of raw planetary mana, Valerie launched herself off the surface of the Earth, shooting straight up like a brilliant golden comet, diving directly into the cold, dead vacuum of the multiverse.
—-
The moment Valerie crossed the jagged, bleeding threshold of the golden firewall and entered the Juncture, the concept of sound ceased to exist.
There was no roaring wind. There was no dramatic explosion. The chaotic, deafening noise of the ruined Earth simply clicked off, replaced by an absolute, suffocating silence that pressed against her eardrums like physical thumbs.
Outer space, Valerie quickly decided, was highly overrated.
*FWOOSH!*
She shot through the dark void like a bullet fired from a railgun. The sheer, unadulterated planetary mana of the Sanctuary Core burning inside her chest acted as a massive, hyper-dense thruster. It propelled her forward at a speed that completely broke the local physics engine. She was a brilliant, blinding golden comet tearing a path through the dark purple cosmic smog.