Martha's fingers tightened around the Star Jewel. "The Star Jewel's special ability is granting the deepest wishes of the person holding it." Her voice remained steady despite the blood still dripping from her chin. "This is how the Salem Towns were able to communicate with Fenrir from the Throne of Myth. How Fenrir could grant their wish. How were they able to summon a piece of Fenrir with the Star Jewel?"

Reinhard's entire body trembled.

Martha's lips curved up. "It seems the first time the jewel appeared was when female beast masters did something similar to what my brothers and sisters did for their village..." She paused and continued in bitter amusement. "Which ironically got mistaken by the villagers as meaning they must be sacrificed for it to work."

Martha's eyes closed as she clutched the Star Jewel against her chest before her body began to glow. It was soft at first, then brighter and brighter as the bodies of the fallen Mehko researchers lit up simultaneously. But it wasn't just them, as the guards and workers also began glowing with symbols appearing. Lines started to form before connecting them with the entire floor, which became a massive diagram.

Then slowly the light moved up and wrapped gently around Martha.

Martha's eyes opened. "It's time for the descent of the Dimension Devourer, Fenrir. Since my sister is fake, then screw this world."

Light exploded outward.

A wave of golden radiance that consumed everything in its path. Reinhard's arms shot out, pulling Anasha against his chest as Zenuken materialized in his grip, and he raised it defensively as the wave crashed into them.

The force was oddly soft as it picked them up and hurled them backward.

Through the air, through space, through the chamber itself, and they smashed through walls that gave way like paper.

They flew through corridors in blurs of motion, rocketed upward through floors that exploded into fragments around them.

…

Outside, Phane City.

A Cheronos sprinted down a narrow street on two legs, as its claws scraped cobblestones while pursuing a family. A father carried his young daughter while the mother dragged their son by the hand over the debris.

A Beast Master dropped from a rooftop directly into the creature's path, with scales appearing over her body. Her hands glowed with crackling electricity that arced between her fingers. She thrust both palms forward. Lightning exploded from her hands before piercing the Cheronos square in the chest, throwing it backward into a building's wall.

Three streets over, a Bumbodusk charged through the market district. The massive boar-creature smashed through vendor stalls while its three-foot tusks swept side to side, demolishing everything in reach.

City Guards formed a hasty barricade using overturned carts with their shields locked together, creating a wall of metal and wood. The Bumbodusk hit the barricade like a battering ram. Wood splintered as the Guards were thrown aside, bodies tumbling across cobblestones.

But behind them, three City Guard Beast Masters unleashed coordinated attacks. An ice spear appeared in the air before rushing down like rain and puncturing the Bumbodusk's hide, drawing blood and squeals of rage.

Then smoke followed as it swirled around the Bumbodusk, and then it wrapped around it. The Bumbodusk trembled as it tried to run out, but then, after four steps, it began slowing down before falling to the ground.

And the last thing it saw was spears of earth erupting from the street beneath the creature before piercing it.

Near the eastern district, two Tonothus stampeded side by side as their curved horns lowered, aimed at anything in their path. Spiked tails dragged behind them, destroying the streets under them and gouging deep furrows in stone streets.

Civilians scattered before them like leaves in the wind. But then an elderly man stumbled before falling with a young woman stopping and reaching down to help the man up onto his feet. Then they started running together while barely staying ahead of the charging beasts that closed in on them.

A male Beast Master with a grey beard and wearing Hunter's Guild insignia, slammed his hands against the ground.

A wall of stone rose between the Tonothus and the fleeing civilians, climbing higher and higher until it blocked the entire street.

The bulls crashed into it with impacts that shook nearby buildings. Their horns punched through the wall, creating spiderweb cracks, but the wall held.

In the western market, an Autumn Deer galloped through vendor stalls. Its green eyes held frightening intelligence as it deliberately smashed through displays, scattered goods, and created terrible destruction.

Two City Guards Inquisitors pursued it on foot. The first raised their black-white bow with patterns on it and fired arrows of air that exploded against the deer's flanks. Forcing the beast towards the side, but then the second City Guard summoned a massive net of golden light that expanded outward towards it.

Everywhere, the pattern repeated.

Phantasm Beasts are rampaging with normal Guards and Inquisitor Guards forming defensive lines. Beast Masters are helping out and rescuing any Civilians who were fleeing through smoke, fire, and chaos.

The air filled with screams, roars, explosions, and the clash of combat.

But then a golden light split the sky.

A pillar of gold erupted from the Mehko Research Center, rushed through into the bright blue sky, and transformed into a sea of gold.

Everything stopped.

The Cheronos mid-lunge froze, yellow eyes tilting upward, while the Bumbodusk stopped its charge, massive head lifting.

Tonothus bulls ceased their stampede as they stared skyward, and the Bone Wyverns landed and stared at the light in awe.

The Phane City Guard paused and looked upwards with a frown while the other Inquisitors paused in confusion. Even the Civilians stopped running, stopped screaming, and just stared up at the city.

Everyone in the city was left stunned.

For a single second, the entire world was drenched in blinding radiance that turned everything golden.

Then came the sound.

A cracking sound rang out, making the windows still intact shatter, and the ground itself tremble. Then thin golden cracks appeared in the sky before branching outward and glowing.

And then the sky shattered.

Everyone saw huge fragments of blue separating, an endless black that seemed to swallow light itself. Reality itself seemed to bend around it, warping and distorting as if struggling to contain what shouldn't exist.

And then they realize it was not darkness but something even more terrifying.

A single golden eye opened.

The eye was large enough to fill the entire crack in the sky. That pupil was shaped like a perfect diamond, around it swirled the endless blackness, spinning in slow vortexes that created patterns too complex to follow.

The air turned heavy as everything the eye gazed on was pressed down. The very atmosphere bent under the gaze of that impossible eye, making breathing difficult for everyone.

A Beast Master fell to his knees, hands pressed against the cobblestones, gasping. A civilian woman had already gone unconscious before she hit the ground.

Normal Guards' shields slipped from their fingers while Phane City Guards felt their Beast Spirit fading and other Inquisitors falling to their knees as they clutched their throats.

Even the Phantasm Beasts whimpered, pressing themselves low, instinct screaming at them that they faced something beyond their comprehension.

Then a black fur leg descended through the crack. The leg was easily twenty feet long, each paw larger than a house.

Thick long golden chains coiled, each link the size of a man, wrapped tightly around the leg. The chains wrapped in spirals from paw to shoulder, and as the leg moved, the chains rattled before another leg emerged, and then another.

The existence continued to force its way through the rift.

Then the ground beneath the Mehko Research Center trembled. Cracks raced across cobblestones, spreading outward in all directions, and the trembling intensified like an earthquake that threw people from their feet.

The building erupted.

Golden light burst upward and outward simultaneously, carrying everything with it. People inside were hurled skyward in streams of radiance while Phantasm Beasts flew through the air. Debris scattered like leaves in a hurricane, spinning and flying before crashing into surrounding buildings.

But nothing was harmed.

The golden light cushioned everything, carried everything gently, and deposited everyone onto rooftops and into streets and through windows.

They were hurt but not dead.

From the crater where the research center once stood, a massive root burst out from below.

Then another dozen black roots covered in golden patterns rushed up. They twisted upward, climbing higher and higher, intertwining and separating and intertwining again as they grew toward the sky.

They formed a towering black tree that rose from the ruins of the Mehko Research Center, climbing until it rivaled the tallest buildings in Phane City. The building itself split down the middle from the tree's emergence, the two halves falling away like shed skin.

At the tree's peak, a flower bloomed.

Each black petal the size of a building, unfurling slowly to reveal inner surfaces marked with the same golden veins that covered the roots. The flower opened fully, creating a platform hundreds of feet across.

And onto that platform, the beast descended.

It landed with a weight that shook the entire tree, making the flower petals tremble. Now fully revealed, the creature stood.

Its form was wolf-like with black fur that rippled across its massive frame, and golden-black markings shone across its body in intricate patterns. Six golden eyes opened, three on each side of its face, and they shone as the beast moved its head.

Every movement distorted reality. When its paw lifted, the air bent around it. When its tail swayed, space itself warped, creating ripples that spread outward like stones dropped in still water.

Above it, for a fleeting instant, something beyond appeared. A swirl of shifting light and shadow that seemed to exist in dimensions the eye couldn't properly track. Multi-colored radiance that contained every color before fading as the sky began healing itself.

Blue slowly stitched over and sealed cracks, reality reasserting itself, refusing to allow the breach to remain. Within minutes, the sky was whole again as if nothing had happened.

But the beast remained.

Fenrir, the Dimension Devourer, stood upon its black flower throne above the ruins of the Mehko Research Center.

And every eye in Phane City stared upward in absolute silence.

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