When Arkai, Eastiel, and Oathran arrived at the rift, they found a nightmare having a meltdown.

The scene before them was illuminated in sickly purple and the harsh white of drone spotlights, and it was, to put it generously, a lot to process.

The twin rifts pulsed like infected wounds in the fabric of reality. Zombies still shambled at the edges of the clearing, though significantly fewer than before. And in the center of it all, chaos reigned.

The two civilians, the tall man in the white t-shirt and the devastatingly beautiful blonde woman, were clutching each other and screaming.

They were screaming at something specific, something that had apparently broken through whatever composure they had managed to maintain.

"KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!"

"DON’T LET IT INFEST THIS WORLD!"

"AAAAAAHHHH—"

"AAAAAAAAAAA— AAAAAHAAAAAAA— AAHAAAAAAAWWWWAAAAAA—"

The man was still holding his shovel, and he was still, impressively, killing zombies without looking at them. A blind swing here, a blind stab there, a blind full-body tackle that sent three undead tumbling into a ditch, all while his mouth remained open in a continuous wail of existential horror.

The woman was wrapped around him now as much as he was wrapped around her, their mutual terror creating a closed loop of screaming that showed no signs of stopping.

Above them, Cecilia was floating.

Not hovering majestically or levitating with divine purpose, nope, she was floating because she had decided the ground was no longer safe and desperately needed to take her feet elsewhere.

Her legs were tucked up beneath her, her arms wrapped protectively around her belly, and her face filled with disgust and squeamishness.

She didn’t want to be on the same ground as whatever that thing was!

The thing in question was crawling out of the second rift.

It was a collection of eyes melted together into a single gelatinous mass the size of a small car, while also having mouths.

Dozens of mouths, scattered among the eyes, lipless and tooth-filled. They opened randomly, stayed open too long, closed too fast. And from each one came a growl, vibrating at a frequency that rattled the bones and made the teeth ache.

The roaring they had heard earlier, the deep sound that had split the night... it might as well come from this thing. This eye-mouth-finger abomination that was now squeezing through the rift.

Again, yes it moved on fingers.

Hundreds of fingers sprouting from its underside, grasping and pulling the mass forward in a horrible skittering crawl. They scrabbled against the scorched asphalt and left wet smears of black ichor behind.

Arkai stopped running. His wolf ears flattened against his head. His tail went rigid.

Eastiel stopped beside him. His lion tail did the same. Then he started to dry heave.

"What," Eastiel managed between gags, "what is—what is—"

Oathran didn’t stop. He launched himself skyward.

Cecilia was trying to push the eye thing back through the rift. Her telekinesis surged outward in a concentrated wave, catching the mass of eyes and mouths and fingers and shoving it backward.

But the moment her force made contact, the creature... melted. Its shape collapsed, liquefied, oozed around her telekinetic grip like a slug slipping through a grasping hand.

It poured itself sideways across the ground, its eyes rolling and bobbing in the fluid like fish eggs in dark jelly, and then reformed on the other side of her push with a wet, sucking pop.

"EEEEEEEEK—" Cecilia screamed.

"GAG—HEAVE—" Momo heaved.

"KILL IT FASTER!" Bunny wailed from the ground.

"Please just... just..." Momo heaved again.

Cecilia changed tactics. If she couldn’t push it, she would slice it into little pieces. Her telekinesis sharpened into a blade and she swept it through the center of the eye mass.

The eyes popped.

They popped like fish eggs. Like overripe fruit. Like blisters full of something that should never see light. Dark brown liquid sprayed in all directions, viscous and foul, and the stench that followed was... indescribable.

Rot and disease, the smell of corruption given physical form. It hit Cecilia’s nose and she gagged, her concentration wavering, her floating form dipping several feet before she caught herself.

She couldn’t look at it. She couldn’t.

Every time she tried, her stomach lurched and her vision swam and. She was fighting blind now, or near enough, her attacks guided more by instinct than sight.

And while she was dealing with the eye thing, the flesh mound pushed through the other rift.

It ripped the opening wider as it came, its mass of fused human limbs tearing at the edges of reality, and the purple light flared so bright that the whole clearing was momentarily bleached of color.

ROAAAAAAAAAR!!!

The mound roared, a sound made of hundreds of voices screaming at once, and lurched toward Cecilia.

She saw the rift core inside it. A dark, pulsing node nestled between layers of melted-together bodies. She reached for it with her telekinesis, trying to tear the bodies apart, trying to expose the core so she could crush it—

"What?!"

The core moved.

It skittered sideways through the flesh, dodging her grip. She reached again. It darted the other way, burrowing deeper, hiding behind a ribcage, then a skull, then a tangle of arms. It was avoiding her.

"You have GOT to be—"

Oathran’s arms closed around her from behind.

She was lifted away from the rifts gently and quickly. Away from the eye-finger-nightmare and the flesh-mound-horror and the stench.

"Wait, wait wait wait—" Cecilia struggled against his grip, her hands pushing at his arms. "I need to protect them—"

She caught herself before she said too much. She didn’t want to reveal that the two screaming civilians were not civilians at all. At least not yet.

Oathran opened his mouth, voice steady, calm in the way he only got when he was actually not calm. "They followed you all the way here, so I’ll assume they can fend for themselves."

Down below, Bunny chose that moment to blindly backflip over a zombie, still screaming, still not opening his eyes, and nail a perfect three-point landing on top of another zombie’s head. Momo, wrapped around his torso, shivered in disgust now.

Neither of them looked particularly concerned for their own safety. Horrified, yes. In danger, no.

"B-but...!" Cecilia said, her voice edged with desperation. "They’re here to watch me do this!"

"Huh?"

Oathran blinked. His misty grey eyes flicked down toward the two screaming civilians, then back to his wife’s face.

Watch? The both of them wouldn’t even open their eyes. The man was blind-swinging his shovel like a terrified windmill. The woman was wrapped around him like a koala, her beautiful face contorted in horror. Neither of them was watching anything.

"What’s to watch? No, who wants to watch this disgusting shi—"

"I need to prove myself!"

Cecilia grasped Oathran’s head with both hands, her fingers pressing against his temples, and stared straight at him. Her eyes were wide. Fierce. Desperate in a way he hadn’t seen since the dam.

Oathran’s eyes widened.

The world fell silent for his ears. The roaring of the flesh mound, the screaming of the two civilians, the wet pop of eyes bursting, the growl of the mouths, all of it faded to nothing.

His soul paused. He had felt this before, he realized. This exact feeling. This exact moment of being seen by her and finding himself measured against something he didn’t fully understand.

"This is important, Oathran." Cecilia said steadily now, the squeamishness pushed aside, the nausea locked away. "I need to be the one who closes this rift."

Oathran fell speechless.

Why?

He thought of the first time he met this woman. She had been on her way to save a pregnant teenager, a stranger, a girl she had no obligation to help.

And later, when that same girl was threatened with malicious accusation, Cecilia had stood in front of her like a shield.

Then he found out she wanted to give away her own invention. The shield she had poured her genius into. She had been ready to hand it over for nothing, or next to nothing, just to save more lives.

Then she stood on that dam. Pushing back an entire reservoir with nothing but sheer will and her refusal to let people get hurt while she was still breathing.

What now?

What was she trying to prove? That she could do it? Or was she trying to prove she was that kind of person?

"You don’t need to prove anyt—"

"I need to let them see..." Cecilia cut him off, her grip on his head tightening, her eyes burning into his. "That I’m strong enough to know now!"

Oathran stared at her.

Them. She kept saying them. She needed to prove something to them, needed them to see.

He looked down again. The man in the white t-shirt had just executed a perfect spinning back-kick into a zombie’s chest without ever taking his face out of the woman’s shoulder. The woman, still being carried, still screaming, had her hand pressed against the man’s chest.

Who... were these people?