My Infinite System.

Smoke hung low over the broken plain.

Marc wiped blood from his mouth and kept moving. The ground beneath him shifted with every step, cracked stone and scorched earth trying to hold shape under the pressure of something that did not belong here. Above them, the sky had torn open in three places, jagged rifts bleeding pale light across the battlefield. Hunters from this world’s local guilds had already fled or fallen. The ones still standing kept their distance, watching from ruined walls and shattered gate remnants.

Silas slammed into the Outer God’s side hard enough to send a shockwave through the air. The impact cracked the creature’s outer layer, black ichor spraying across the dirt. It staggered, then retaliated with a sweep of elongated limbs that carved trenches through the ground. Silas took the hit across the ribs, skidded, and came up grinning through bloodied teeth.

”Still standing,” he called.

Marc didn’t answer. He raised one hand and the space around the Outer God compressed, folding inward like paper crushed in a fist. The creature’s form buckled, limbs bending at wrong angles before it forced its way free with a sound like tearing metal. Reality around it flickered, trying to reject the distortion.

They had chased it across three worlds already. Each time it escaped just far enough to dig in again. This place looked too much like home—gates in the distance, residual talent signatures clinging to the air, the familiar stink of monsters and broken awakeners. It made the fight feel personal in a way the others hadn’t.

The Outer God rose to its full height. Its body was a shifting mass of dark matter and half-formed faces, constantly rewriting itself. When it spoke, the voice came from everywhere at once.

”You cannot hold me here forever.”

Silas spat blood and charged again. He moved faster than anything that size should have been able to track, slamming fist after fist into the creature’s core. Each impact sent ripples through its form. He absorbed the backlash energy bleeding off it, converting the force into more strength, more speed, more stubborn refusal to go down. The ground cratered beneath them.

Marc worked from range, reshaping the battlefield itself. Stone pillars rose to pin the Outer God’s limbs. Gravity wells opened beneath it, dragging it down. When it tried to tear open another rift to escape, Marc sealed the space shut with a sharp gesture, veins standing out along his temples from the strain.

”Stay with me,” Marc said through gritted teeth.

Silas laughed, breathless. ”Not going anywhere.”

The Outer God adapted. It split into three overlapping forms, each one attacking from a different angle. One lashed at Silas with tendrils of void. Another tried to crush Marc under a sudden spike of density. The third began unraveling the local talent fields, feeding on the residual energy left by this world’s hunters.

Silas took the first tendril across the shoulder and kept moving, absorbing what he could and letting the rest tear through him. Blood ran freely down his arm. He grabbed the second tendril and ripped it free, using the momentum to close distance again. His fists blurred. The Outer God’s midsection deformed under the barrage.

Marc dropped to one knee as the density spike hit, then forced the pressure outward, turning the attack back on its source. The creature’s second form staggered. Marc didn’t give it time to recover. He reached deeper, rewriting the immediate space around them—slowing the Outer God’s movements, hardening the air into barriers, pulling heat from the surrounding rifts to burn across its surface.

The fight dragged on.

Minutes blurred into something longer. Silas’s breathing grew ragged. Marc’s control slipped in small ways, the edges of his constructs fraying. The Outer God learned as it fought, shedding damaged layers and reforming stronger. Local hunters who had tried to help earlier were gone now—either dead or driven back beyond the ruined gates.

Silas took a direct hit that sent him through a half-collapsed building. Stone and dust exploded outward. He lay still for a second too long before forcing himself up, one arm hanging wrong.

Marc’s voice cut across the field. ”Silas!”

”I’m fine.” Silas spat more blood and staggered forward. ”Just need a second.”

The Outer God turned toward Marc fully now, sensing the greater threat. It gathered itself, body compressing into a denser, sharper form. The air around it warped. Reality began to thin.

Marc planted both feet and pushed back with everything he had left. The two forces met in the middle—his will against the Outer God’s nature. The ground between them cracked open. Pale light flared. For a moment it looked like neither would give.

Silas hit the creature from behind at full speed, driving it off-balance just enough for Marc to seize the opening. He collapsed the space around its core, crushing inward with brutal focus. The Outer God screamed—a sound that made the remaining rifts shudder.

It still didn’t fall.

Both guys were bleeding openly now. Silas’s durability was the only reason he was still moving. Marc’s nose bled freely from the strain of holding the battlefield together. They had pushed the Outer God hard, harder than in any previous confrontation, but it was adapting faster than they could break it.

A fresh surge of energy rolled off the creature as it prepared another assault.

Then the air changed.

A new presence cut through the chaos—steady, heavy, unmistakable. The Outer God hesitated for the first time since the fight began. Silas turned his head, blood running down his jaw. Marc’s eyes narrowed against the dust.

Lucian stepped through the haze at the edge of the ruined plain.

He looked around once, taking in the broken gates, the residual talent signatures, the familiar shape of a world that felt too much like the one they had lost. Something quiet passed through his expression—recognition, maybe, or the weight of old memory.

Then he looked at the Outer God, and at his brothers standing bloodied in front of it.

He started walking forward.

The Outer God shifted, attention splitting. Silas wiped blood from his mouth and grinned despite the damage.

”Took you long enough.”

Marc didn’t smile, but some of the tension in his shoulders eased.

Lucian didn’t answer. He simply kept coming, eyes fixed on the thing they had been trying to kill for too long already.

The Outer God rose higher, preparing for a new enemy.

The fight was about to change.