The machine turned slowly, too slowly, revealing a perfect replica: Navir's deep bronze skin, circuitry gleaming like constellations beneath the surface, dark coiled hair pulled back with silver clasps. But the eyes were wrong. Too still. Too empty. No soul behind them.
Malvor's lip curled. "Oh no. You built yourself a toy."
The machine's pupils flared with pulsing blue light. "Unauthorized presence. Realm disturbance detected. Initiating defense protocol."
It did not hesitate. It did not think. It struck.
The first volley came silent and fast, electrical spears like blue starlight, flung with surgical accuracy. Malvor twisted, barely dodging, shadow flaring from his heels as he somersaulted backwards over a console. The bolts struck the wall behind him, exploding in a cascade of blue fire and fragmented code.
He landed in a crouch, conjuring a chaos blade in one hand and a whip of liquid entropy in the other. "But I am done being polite."
The machine surged.
They collided in the center of the room. Blade met staff, chaos clashing with electricity. Sparks rained in every direction. A console exploded. Pillars cracked under the pressure.
The machine was fast. Too fast.
Its adaptive programming adjusted instantly. It caught Malvor's whip and hurled him into a reinforced wall with bone-snapping force.
He hit hard, ribs shuddering, shoulder denting the alloy, and slumped to the floor.
But then he laughed.
Low, guttural, full of rage and madness.
He spit a mouthful of blood, wiped it with the back of his hand, and pushed off the wall like he did not feel it. "That all you've got, knockoff?"
The machine didn't answer. It moved, faster this time, striking with a bladed arm that sparked with pure voltage.
Malvor raised his hand and twisted gravity on a whim.
The floor turned into a wall. The air shimmered. Logic broke.
The machine lost its footing for half a second. Enough.
Malvor launched himself sideways, whip snapping, wrapping around the machine's torso. With a roar, he yanked it through a vertical data column, shattering it in a storm of light and code.
But the machine was not finished.
Mid-flight, it morphed, its arms shifting into a twin-blade staff, which began spinning midair. It struck the ground first, vaulting itself like a gymnast and slamming both blades into Malvor's side.
He was thrown into a pillar. The entire structure groaned and collapsed around him in a thunder of stone and sparks.
Silence.
Then—
Malvor emerged, slow, feral.
His suit was torn. His lip was bleeding. A long gash sliced across his abdomen, glowing faintly.
But his eyes burned.
"You hit like a philosophy professor," he muttered.
The machine dove again.
They met with a thunderclap of raw energy. Magic versus mechanics. Chaos met calculation, each strike warping the room around them, floors rippling, walls folding into fourth-dimensional impossibilities.
Malvor grabbed the machine by the throat mid-swing and slammed it into the ground, shattering three layers of reinforced crystal in the process. He rode the impact down, kneeling on its chest.
"Tell. Me. Where. She. Is!" he snarled with each punch, his knuckles blazing with chaos.
The machine glitched and rebooted mid-beat down, flipping him off with an energy pulse that hurled him backward like a rag doll.
He rolled across the shattered ground, came up coughing blood… and laughing.
"Oh, you are so much fun," he growled.
He reached into the ground itself, pulled chaos like thread from a wound in reality. The air screamed as he surged forward, faster now, blade glowing like a dying star.
The machine raised its staff, but Malvor beat it to the swing.
He drove the chaos blade through its midsection, locking eyes with the flickering mimic.
Circuits sizzled. Sparks burst from its frame. It spasmed.
"Tell me."
Nothing.
The machine jerked once. Twitched. Sparks erupted from its chest.
Then, flatline. No words. No glitch. No answers. Just a dead thing staring at him with Navir's borrowed face.
Malvor stilled.
And for the first time in the entire spiral of madness—
He realized.
He'd gotten nothing.
"No. NO!" Malvor grabbed the husk by the chest, shook it. Slammed it into the wall. Again. And again. "Don't you die on me, you divine scrap heap! TELL ME!"
But it was dead. Useless. Silent.
Something cracked.
Malvor screamed. The sound rattled the tower. Chaos exploded from him in a ring of concussive force. Consoles burst into flame. Panels melted. The room itself, built to withstand godly energies, buckled.
Reality inside the chamber warped. The floor spiraled. The walls bent inward. Light refracted in unnatural angles as Malvor unleashed wave after wave of unfiltered destruction. Divine logic twisted. The sleek lines of Navir's perfect realm fractured under the pressure of chaos. Blood from his wounds splattered across glowing glass, sizzling on impact.
He collapsed a pillar with a wave of his hand. Another snapped with a thought.
He turned and tore open a wall with his bare hands, nothing but blinding light and exposed wiring behind it. Static screamed in the air. Screens glitched and shattered.
And still, no answer. No Annie.
Behind him, alarms began to whine. Doors slid open on broken hinges. Two tech priests stumbled in, eyes wide, robes smoking from the heat. They froze.
One whispered, barely audible, "It is true… he's lost her…"
"The girl," another said, "she's gone."
Malvor's head turned slowly.
They backed away.
He said nothing. Just breathed. Shaking. Bleeding.
And then, without another sound, he vanished.