Dawn crawled like a wound, healing with a barely noticeable film of starlight that no longer warmed. The sun did not rise above the horizon - it squeezed itself out from behind distant ridges, as if someone huge was pushing it from within this world, like a core that was fading with every second. Or a wheel? Each of its rays, escaping, flickered like a glass needle immersed in water, and disappeared, as if dissolving into reality itself. The shadows no longer fell. They grew from cracks in the ground, flowed out of stones and grass, like a viscous liquid, mixing with the air. Their movements could not be guessed: some went against the light, others seemed independent of the laws of time. Where the border should have been, there were only waves of ripples, as if the earth itself was shaking in its death throes.

  Illar stood in the midst of this chaos, not noticing that his own shadow was being torn from his feet. It trembled, stretched upward like a torn thread, and then began to spread to the sides, leaving behind barely visible strokes, as if someone had tried to erase it from the canvas of the world, but forgot to finish the job.

  The sky no longer belonged to this universe. There were no usual twinkling stars or snow-white clouds on it - only pulsating arteries, sometimes intersecting, sometimes diverging into fragments of the cosmic stomach. There was a threat in their every movement, hidden like a knife flashing under a cloak of immensely ancient and eternally decaying skin. Illar felt his mind trying to comprehend the phenomenon that was happening, but every look inside himself only intensified the headache, pulsating along with these lines under the eyelids, the folds of the stomach, between the toes and hunched back. In the eyes there is dark steel, worn out by years of labor and silent struggle with the stubborn earth. His hand habitually lay on the ax handle, tightly gripping the mechanical fastener of the shaft.

  The blade, eternally sharp, covered with thin veins of darkening steel, flashed in the first rays, like a predatory premonition. The man called him “The Voice of the Earth.” Each blow cut not only wood, but also something invisible that connected him to this stubborn, living soil all the years of labor.

  Something was moving in the distance—vague, heavy, gigantic, like the breath of an ancient divine beast. The air was drawn into a tight, burning loop that smelled of molten metal and charred root. Illar felt his chest squeeze, as if this noose was now tightly squeezing his neck.

  Illar looked up at the horizon, and his breath froze in his chest, as if he had been pushed out of a world where air was still important. Something was there - not a form, not a being, but the broken echo of a thousand touches of fingers near the ears, as if the cracked membrane of the world was trembling under the hum of an endless presence, someone’s presence loading the weight of an entire planet. His gaze could not catch on to anything specific: trees, fields, old mountain hills, horizon lines melted like soggy paper, leaving imprints of pain similar to burns.

  The Titan was there. Or it wasn't. Not visible to the eye, but felt by the gut, alien, like a splinter stuck under the skin that cannot be pulled out with the long edge of an ax. The feeling of his presence came from within - a heavy tearing pain, as if a sharp blade had pierced deep, cutting not the organs, but the very essence of perception. But this pain did not remain alone - it crawled deep into the consciousness, curling into a long slimy lump that breathed, moaned, lived its own life in a piece of a foaming young cyst. And the air rang like a string stretched to the limit, the vibration of which entered the skin, cracked in the bones, gave off a burning pain in the skull, piercing the thick bodies of plants and the fragile feathers of green foliage.

  The feeling was alive, as if his insides were trying to open in response to something nameless that had entered this world through an invisible crack. Illar felt this entity sliding through his mind, not recognizing him as a person, but only as another macroscopic knot of endlessly proliferating and dying flesh, like a grain of sand on the path of unstoppable decay. It even seemed to him that he heard subtle touches of thought diffused in space. The Titan was breathing. Or did you think? His invisible presence was like a tongue, which, having passed along the body of the planet, left deep notches on it. He's to blame, he's sorry. He hates and despises. Grieving. But he forgives...

  The ground in front of Illar began to move. Softly, almost imperceptibly. Figures rose from the ground, but they could not be called people? These were the broken shadows of memories belonging to humans, hemians and others. Women with stretched, silently singing faces, whose lips opened in song without sound, without fear. Men with empty chests, where instead of hearts there were bottomless mouths filled with endless screams, bursting out with mighty anthems, insults, patriotic eruptions of words. They walked past in disorderly herds, unaware of Illar, their bodies twitching like ghostly projections, layered on top of each other, like hundreds of blurry photographs printed on damp paper. Their movements were jerky, as if the world itself was trying to erase them from the face of the earth, but could not complete its work.

  -Have you looked at the stars?..

  — Do you remember them?

  -Have you counted their numbers?

  One of the birds suddenly froze in the air, as if it had been struck by an invisible spear piercing space. The wings remained spread, but the living flight disappeared, giving way to artificial immobility. It seemed as if time itself had decided to detain her, holding her in a tense pause between moments. Then she began to move to the left - in sharp, broken jerks, as if an invisible hand grabbed her and clumsily pulled her through a small section of space. Her body became unnaturally long, as if someone was pulling it by invisible threads. The flesh lost its shape, but did not disappear, remaining in crumbling pieces. Suddenly the space around her collapsed like glass shattered by a silent blow. The air crunched, closing in with an invisible force. The bird exploded in one short squeeze. A single bone with an eyeball flew out of her head. In place of her almost dissolved bloody head, only her shank remained, shining dimly in the twilight, before she disappeared into silence, falling somewhere down into the thick grass.

  The other birds froze, as if sensing someone else's presence. Their bodies tensed, their wings twitched convulsively. The air suddenly became noticeably heavy, as if filled with invisible pressure, thick and sticky, like oil.

  The next blow fell on the group, which made an awkward turn in panic. The space around them twisted like crumpling metal, and suddenly compressed into one unimaginably dense point. In an instant, they disappeared, leaving only a bloody crater of feathers and flesh, which was instantly caught by an invisible whirlwind.

  The sound again remained somewhere outside this world, not reaching the ears - only a trembling in the bones indicated that something was.

  Illar was the one who always felt the ground under his nails, even when his hand did not touch it. His life was cyclical, like the change of seasons: work, crops, caring for his family. In his village, technology mixed with ancient practices, where the earth was still revered, and inventions were not a burden, but only a way to make hard work easier. His house was old, simple, but full of warmth - outside the windows of the eternal darkness of their home, which created harmony with nature, life was always in full swing.

  Setanna, his beloved wife, was wise and strong, her hands were always covered with calluses, but her face was soft, like freshly baked bread. She stood behind him, always supported him, although she did not get into his reserved soul. Her eyes, wise with pain and joy, looked into the future without losing hope, but in her gaze there was longing for what was lost and the bitterness of what cannot be returned. They had been through a lot together, but life seemed more unbearable than ever.

  The daughter's face was the first to emerge above the porch of the house - shining, filled with life, like a ray of light in a musty basement. But this light quickly began to change shade: too white, too cold, like moonlight, from which you cannot escape. He saw her eyes widen in fear of something invisible. Wasn't she standing in the middle of an empty house, surrounded by unfamiliar creatures? Or was it his fault? Her laughter sounded high, too shrill, almost like breaking musical strings. This sound came out of her mouth like shards of a mirror, and his own memory immediately shattered into pieces. Illar remembered her childhood dreams - to become a scientist, to explore the stars. But why did the stars for a moment turn into red-hot spokes piercing her small palms? Where did this come from? Why did he suddenly feel like he was giving her to the sacrificial altar?

  The eldest stopped in the distance, at the very edge of the forest. She had always been quiet, but now her silence had become an eternal vow. He saw her as a lonely figure, standing in a black field, clutching in her hands something soft and fluttering - like a bird with torn wings. The bird twitched in her small palms, but she continued to stroke it, as if trying to calm it down. Or break it even more.

  Why did he suddenly remember that time when he couldn't find her? When he found her two days later at an old abandoned temple, kneeling in front of a ruined statue of a god no one remembered?

  Marina raised her eyes to him in this vision, and he felt an unbearable heaviness - as if she saw right through him, and in her gaze there was an awareness of something terrible and ancient. A realization he himself had never had.

  Heavy tread. The rattle of chains. Illar heard this sound in every thought, as if his own brain was dragging shackles. The eldest son Axel was too tall, too stately, as always, but now his silhouette trembled as if in a flame.

  “You did everything wrong, father.” — The voice sounded like a bolt of lightning, breaking the burning and cramped silence.

  His hands were stained with oil or blood - Illar could not tell. He had seen Axel dismember old machines as a child, creating strange, useless devices, but now he was faced with mechanical monsters made of flesh and steel. He never recognized their form - only the unbearable presence of pain locked in every movement of these monsters. Axel stepped forward, and the ground around him cracked like bursting leather. His face, as if eaten away by insane symbols, became unbearably alien. Or was it always like this and he just didn’t notice?

  His wife was the closest. The sun's reflections played in her hair that day when he first saw her. Now this hair felt as if it had been burned. Her gaze—impeccably warm—suddenly became distorted, became faded, like an old painting, and Illar felt an invisible weight fall on his shoulders. He remembered how they lay next to each other in silence, how she whispered something soothing to him when he could not sleep. Now her whisper sounded like the rustle of dry leaves being crushed by the wind.

  He fell to his knees, his mind trembling against this incomprehensible intrusion. His thoughts—his past—were no longer his. Everything he knew, everything he loved, was twisted and turned inside out, like an inverted leather bag with millions of soft bridles at the bottom. He heard a distant rustling, as if the Titan himself was looking into his memories and decided to reassemble them in his own way, breaking every detail, every meaning, every symbol. His breathing became ragged. The whole world trembled, as if its existence was teetering on the edge of rupture. The man realized that what was now happening in his head was just the beginning. This was the Titan's first breath, his play with reality. And now he knew that the past no longer existed. It was just now. Only irreversible.

  The space no longer screamed, did not crack - it calmed down, curled in on itself, like a frightened animal. The branches of the trees trembled in place, but the leaves did not sway, as if the wind now existed somewhere beyond the boundaries of thought.

  The earth was covered with a network of deep, invisible cracks, through which the absence of color, the primordial vacuum itself, peeked out. The stones melted with their own memory of weight, crumbling into fine dust, like the crushed bones of something eternal.

  A crack in the face that exposes the lie

  Sighing quietly, the eldest ran her hand over her stomach, and her body obeyed her will. The ribs parted with a crunch, spreading apart like the petals of a strange flower. A heart fell out of the sternum - not bloody, but translucent, like a crumpled piece of glass amber. She pulled it out without the slightest regret, trembling barely noticeably from pain that was impossible to hide. Other organs followed: lungs, liver, stomach - coiled into strange organic spheres, flickering with dim golden lights like forgotten relics.

  Nadia held them out to Titanis, as if offering fruit from a torn tree.

  The younger Titanide stopped, bowing her head, as if examining the gift, but her gaze penetrated deeper - it slid over the remnants of the girl’s soul, studying her weaknesses, her lost faith, her forgotten fears. Her outstretched fingers, which seemed to be created from layers of burnt reality, gently wrapped around the organs, squeezed, and there was so much love and gratitude in this touch.

  The organs suddenly flared up, lighting up with a strange ashen light, like a flock of pulsating animal bodies, and disappeared into the depths of the Titanide, becoming part of it, and in place of the girl’s heart, something alien, new appeared. Torn Heart lay on her massive palm, still beating, but fluidlike wax under fire. The tissue of the human body began to perversely heal, closing itself with fibers woven from colorless threads of broken reality.

  The world shook.

  Not in.

  Not an exchange.

  Confession.

  Nadiya suddenly saw her father standing in the distance, a broken figure at the edge of the field, disappearing into the ragged algorithm of the universe. His eyes were dead, alien, like those of those who had already seen the other side of the world.

  And then Titanide made a gesture - nervous, sharp, like a spasm, curled into a knot of pulsating fibrous space, as if reality itself trembled in pain.

  Their house is quiet. Walls in which dust has accumulated are the remnants of forgotten thoughts. Every breath is like steps in an empty gallery where no one is standing anymore. Illar and his family are victims of their own eternity. They still remember how they woke up one day, but they forgot why. And not because forgetting is the lot of the weak. No. They forgot because it’s easier for them.

  Look at him. An ordinary person, dressing in fashion, with a tense mask of a “caring father”. In his eyes - nothing. He cannot even explain to himself why so much time in his life is spent on empty rituals: food, bed, conversations, work, this whole meaningless race, where every step leads to a dead end. What is this face that he presents to the world? Expects his actions to be understood? You're lying, Illar. You know that no one understands you. You know that no one will understand you, because even you yourself are not able to recognize yourself. You try to hide it behind speeches about how much you love your family. But you know what? You are simply afraid, afraid to admit that your love is not love, but a safe place where you don’t need to think. You have love in order to be sure that you will not be alone.

  Titanide grins at his hidden mind fragments. Thin, dirty, like torn pieces of paper with notes that have long been forgotten. Illar does not understand that he is the one who is incapable of love. He cannot love because he does not know what it is like to be himself. But he can count how, for every empty minute, his consciousness wipes out another memory, another component of what makes him human. He has no inner voice. You're not alive. You exist, but you don't live.

  His wife.What kind of woman? There is no rage in her gaze. There is no pity in her silence. There is only lifeless patience, which is passed on to her through generations, as if this is her destiny. She became like all this blood that flows in her veins. Forgetting about feelings is her choice, her decision, because it’s easier to be like this than to break this fruitless circle. Her every breath, every glance, every step is filled with hidden despair that she will never see the world outside her cell. She was afraid to be a woman, afraid to be a mother, afraid to be someone real, and not part of a mechanism that feeds her the illusion of “happiness.” Fear of being noticed is its real essence. By hiding it, she sold her soul for an uneasy balance, for the confidence that everything in her life is controlled, even if this control isartificial.

  Their children already know that there has been no heat in their house for a long time. Titanide sees that inside each of them there are fragile fragments secondary worldswhich they themselves are unable to understand. How to educate people when you yourself cannot know what it means to be human? Inspire them? You can't. You don't understand what inspiration is.

  When Illar's last gaze meets his family's, he sees only one thing: the world they once knew is disappearing. All that remains is the out-of-sync illusion of a flower that never was and never will be.

  ***

  It seemed to dry up there, being rejected, ceased to be, and then never

  and was not and was not absence, as it seemed to the slowly advancing proboscis, exuding moisture and pheromones, they multiplied, breathed, formed, inexhaustibly smoldered and were born edges, vessels, fading brown growths, rapidly absorbed by the tormented, as if torn into pieces, emptiness from which it spread... Turning his head back, until painfully forming cracks around small bones. To see the many outlines of streets colored by the light of lamps, hybrid structures, stray animals, distorted by the human factor from pronouns, shimmering with another imaginary sensitivity, liquid in the four-section hemispheres of the brain organ, chaotic, crossed with tangible macroscopic spaces of space, developing immeasurably up to the first appearance, sensation, decomposition, movement, which became your first sound, echo, your voice, your understanding, or absence, limply weighing down in the distant expanses at the bottom of a bed or a sea of ??sand. They are warming themselves. They're freezing. They bark loudly. Laughing hard as they watch. They sob quietly, imagining it.

  A system overflowing with transformative information [FLASH] burst out with continuous notifications inside the invigorated consciousness, while in parallel with it the corporeal body was rapidly clad in the service armor of nullification, partially covered by a superstructural metamorphosis, usually intended for prolonged combat operations. But with all this, surrounded by some of his comrades who exchanged glances, he was not the only one who was taken by surprise. A sudden, mind-shattering awakening. A minute to prepare. And now, together with their colleagues, their path is blocked by the service cabins of a combat vehicle, in the belly of which they will hold out until their destination.

  His eyes were already fearfully examining the horribly disfigured expanses of two central districts, located a hundred kilometers from the capital: the semi-industrial “Gardariki” and the “Mila-Davaguren”, shared with many residential areas. The destroyed surroundings seemed to have become outdated battlefields, above which even the sky itself was... Torn to pieces. Spewing out as if thick vital rivers of cyan-blue blood, surrounded by infinitely massive, multi-colored ribs, bending in all directions, surfaces, underground entrails and words, both dear to someone’s heart and disgustingly cursing anyone who is exposed to the approaching ugly waves. This nightmarish sight, continuously transmitted to his consciousness in real time, made his heart beat excitedly under a pile of power mechanisms breathing in unison.

  — "Our squad is the sixth stream! Primary task: preservation and evacuation of all residents, exclusively target and civilian class. Children and women under 52 years old under 48’2 - 11 invibra. Men under 74 years old under 50 invibra." - the voice of the operation manager resounded with the final fixed order, calculated by all forty-five guardsmen located in the unloading cabin. - "Everyone stick to the third amendment! Under no circumstances -《DO NOT ENTER BATTLE》with an unknown force and do not attempt to interfere. The Guardians will protect you and provide you with proper support. Everyone be on alert!"

  The yellow lenses around the young guardsman's eyes turned to the spheroid, activated by the touch of thought contact, to the dirty window. A dozen more unloading capsules moved next to their equipment, occasionally maneuvering between the rubble and flying over squat, destroyed hills, disgustingly blazing with poisoned greenish smog, which seemed to contain numbers that raped the zodiac signs and other psychological manipulations of long-dead creators, flayers and artists with branded black spots. The apartment towers of corporations, retail units, and everyday backcountry parts were emptied in a matter of hours, already partially destroyed as the unknown threat advanced.

  Another capsule rushed past them in the opposite direction with lightning speed, which had probably recently left the scene of the growing disaster. But the guardsman, who was ardently watching his surroundings, was horrified by the thick and wide sheets of possible blood, in which the machine upholstery of the crumpled rescue equipment was smeared, as if not a single living place remained from it.

  — "Thuram! Thuram! Hear-..can you hear me!?“- the sudden voice, partially distorted by network interference and an unexpected reset of factory subsystem settings, conveyed good-hearted concern and concern for his friend.

  — "Ah... Arcadia?" - from the first moment he recognized the familiar voice of his friend.

  — "Are you on the way to Veles?"

  It was as if the inexhaustible noise of the collapsing atmospheric surf somehow intruded through the casing of the equipment, through the matrix of the sensory-brain flow and the damaged network channel, from which the mysterious interference, albeit not much, made it difficult to try to clearly hear the female voice on the other side. But then, it was especially difficult to understand why there was so much anguish in her voice.

  — "Yes. I'll be there in eleven minutes!" - Thuram answered confidently, listening carefully to her confused, painful breathing, looking back at one of the many screens with a timer. - "What happened to you!?"

  — "I... Pro-ost-t me..." - tears were heard from there. - "I b-was there. I...I'm probably dying..."

  — "What do you mean you're dying!?"

  Some of the guards glanced at each other before continuing to eavesdrop on their conversation.

  — "I no longer have my right arm... No legs... I don’t feel my liver... And sadness". - the damaged voice was saturated with something liquid, which made it difficult for her to breathe. - "I-I can’t... restore them... It’s as if THEY forbid me to d-do this..."

  Thoughts finally succumbed to nightmarish confusion, tightly squeezing the ability to speak. He listened in fear to her corrupted quiet voice, trying to catch every painful impulse of her body. How can this happen to her? Is this really possible? And why did they treat her like that?

  — "Do you remember the sign of the Trinity?" - it was hard to believe, but a smile seemed to creep into her voice. - "Her sons... Her daughter. This is them... our rebirth. I was never a saint, I never believed in this... it would seem like a fairy tale..."

  — "Ar... Arcadia. Darling, what are you talking about?" — from under his heavy yellow eyelashes flowed tears.

  — "P-please don't be afraid of what might happen to us." - on the other side there was a loud, speech-interrupting noise of a massive collapse. - "I believe... W-where the old us ends, others will appear... similar... But we will be new."

  - ARCADIA!! — in despair, he burst into a loud cry, mercilessly deafening all the emotions that silently hit the interrupted channel of the no longer existing call.

  He abruptly broke away from the connecting cables and jumped up to the grate, before anyone else he felt how the equipment was slowing down. He was ready to be one of the first to break out, but immediately froze in front of the opened gate. All his experiences were scattered with a disgusting stench of flesh. It was rotting in immensely spacious moist tumors, closer to the fatty deposits around the yellowed old drupes, the oldest of which had decomposed into deep, shriveled cracks, radiating upward to the clear snow-white sky. Inside them, they were moving, crawling, bending as if they were trying to rise - wounded interstitial covers from which an extraordinary drawn-out sound was thickly oozing, when this organic bleeding mixture appeared, it became covered with plump slippery blisters. Or was it a voice deep inside? Sinking. Clinging to memories that never existed. So familiar, understandable, but at the same time completely alienated from this collapsing world. From the spreading and translucent physical waves, a song gradually took shape, which Arcadia once told him. When does this happen? First year at the military academy. First day of school. Their first meeting. First sunset together.

  And here I am. I protect the world I love. I don’t regret that I was never able to sing this song to the rest of the world... I’m a stupid girl, aren’t I?

  The terrifying stench of decomposition gnawed under his armor, under his compers overalls, squeezing salty moisture from his nose. Having torn the spiral section of the jammed links, he threw his helmet away from him, hoping to catch at least one breath of less nasty air, which was impossible to get rid of, no matter where it went. Just a feeling of guilt generated by weakness, the death of those whom I had not remembered for so long. The strength left his legs, crushingly hitting the warm ground heated by the turbines. Traffic signs were scattered in dim neon islands along a wide city highway, the other end of which turned out to consist of indescribably gigantic red walls the size of an entire universe, in comparison with which it was a fleeting pop of air. Breathable. Walls pulsating with greenish-liquid veins. Foaming with unknown gigantic liquids like rivers spilling around the dark growing deformations and other accumulative reactions of an immensely tormented organ that is in chaotically moving stimulation. As if the integrity of his longest protruding vein in his leg depended on them, from something trying to escape from under the flesh, drowning in gray, green acids. And as if the integrity of his own anatomy, the nails on his index fingers and hands, as well as his little fingers, depended on his eye shells, his attempt not to succumb to their alluring contacts, flows, numerous vibrations. Interfemoral folds. Attractive names of cultural foods, painfully echoing with unfamiliar smells right up to his very temples. They definitely twitch. They argue. They compete.

  The willfully proliferating anatomy engulfed the buildings that had withstood the pressure of the contracting muscles, often connecting them with thick nerve endings, woven into thick smooth cables, inside which blood cells flowed with air. Between the charred stones and small flexible cartilage, the dim lights of billboards distorted by interference could still be heard. They behaved as strangely as this place. They invaded his entire being, demonstrating everything that had never existed. Beautiful, amazing, cruel, disgusting moments next to which a flexible ideational connection began to be absent. Who he was could be nothing more than a deliberately planned psychophysical patent from his own kind. Brought up. We grew up. Trained. They left the imaginary right to choose between ten thousand options, among which he is still not an artificially bred insect, calmly feeding on sluggish gas. Injecting hormonal degradation into someone's food. Absorption by one selection regarding the torn from the original maternal nerve. Loyalty to the spells of the ideas of one altruistic messenger with a crippled hand, unable to hold two books at the same time? Or mercy for a short-lived species that fell in love with hair color and created one single place, which they will later call home?

  Thuram touched his right hand, ignoring his bare left hand and touching the dense power surface of the armor. The silvery-gilded piece is picked away along with the breaking fingernail on the index finger, breaking off with a long purple spike reminiscent of bubbly gummy grapes that somehow stretched outward instead of blood nodes and natural muscles. Doesn't matter. But now my hand doesn’t itch anymore. It doesn't matter anymore. And this hole can be patched with anything. There is plenty of liquid... everything... else that will fit and replenish every lost milligram of protein...

  He picks up the dirt around him, not having and not wanting to spend moments on a long-term search for alternatives, taking fairly wet and sometimes viscous soil, pushing it into a deep narrow funnel in his hand, filling it to the brim, down to the last grain of sand, in order to stop having empty space in his constant weakening form.

  He was shaken violently by the shoulder, not deliberately breaking him out of his trance. His colleague extended his hand to him, and several detachments had already grouped nearby, including some civilians, hiding behind improvised walls made of elegant classic cars of the A-82, Rosetta model from the distant year 1569.

  But for some reason, in the heads not protected by armor, Thuram was suddenly confused by their bizarre wide shapes, reminiscent of the large beaks of pelicans, in whose necks a lot of freshly caught fish seemed to be collected, even if they stank of sardines.

  - Focus, private! Their deceitful pseudo-volunteer took refuge at the base of this dairy plant. This is his last line of defense that we must cross! We have no right to die here! - spoke from his beak covered with reddened skin with stretched, snotty nostrils.

  - What?..

  The sounds of shelling and explosions were drowned out by distorted subcutaneous screams. The giant blood-bearing rocks and buildings on the other side did not appear in front of him, and instead of them, in fact, all this time there was a disproportionately large factory, the defense of which was almost impossible to break through with their extremely small combat-ready personnel. What does Commander Aramen even hope for? With their strength, it is only possible to divert a larger number of enemy groups to themselves, and then not for long. But for whom and how exactly to pull this off under the opponents’ noses?

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  Thick snow-white fumes came out of the giant exhaust towers, which means work in the workshops does not stop even now, in such an unstable extraordinary situation. Thousands of poor cows continue to be exploited even before their eyes, as if mocking the duty of justice of his comrades.

  - Oh, you bastards! - Thuram bared his teeth angrily, hiding from an explosive shell in the air behind another makeshift wall, covered with corrosive chemical solutions from expired cheese samples. - What should we do, commander!? There's no way we'll get through that bridge! We will be on a silver platter for them! - he turned to a man with a long red mustache reloading a gun made of high-quality papier-maché. Eh, he always dreamed of such a magnificent mustache as a child.

  - At ten o’clock, there is a horde near the white column! Let's quickly go down it and we can cross the border underground! It’s true that you can easily get lost in the tunnels, so let’s all stick together! Someone has to cover these people! - Commander Aramen spoke very loudly into the microphone with unusual enthusiasm and inspiration in his eyes.

  - Commander Aramen! You idiot! Our opponents just heard everything! - one of the ordinary soldiers boiled with rage when the shelling of their shelters increased a hundredfold.

  - Ugh... Well, I was thinking that because of the shelling, no one would hear me? — Aramen looked sadly at his soldiers, awkwardly holding the microphone to his chest.

  Several shells suddenly pierced the skin of the vehicles, piercing the commander's neck and stomach. He instantly fell to the ground with his limbs torn to shreds, from which a sugary white caramel oozed, in which fragments of ribs and cervical vertebrae covered with red vessels were drowning.

  - Commander Aramen!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! - one of the soldiers desperately lamented over the mutilated body of the commander, unable to contain his emotions.

  From the fresh oozing wounds, snow-white pure petals blossomed, smoothly making their way into the peaceful light like the wide wings of numerous lepidopteran butterflies. Spreading cobwebs of trembling blue veins and rapid circulation spread across their clean, faded covers from the bud itself. A few more terrestrial gaps and they will begin to eat the pollen of other plants. They will tear to shreds the skin on someone’s muzzle or palm that dares to touch their captivating leper environment - devoid of meaning, regrets, structure, protein masses, everything alive and everything that is not replenished beyond the smallest single structures of existence which, inside one primitive substance, will one day be reborn, one day will die in the form of this happening words, pronunciation, contact.

  The left eye has already slipped to the level with one corner of the lips, frantically absorbing atmospheric air as if they were small pieces of square ice. At the shoulder joint, a mediocre troupe of performers performed, accompanied by excited musicians using solo musical instruments, who together composed a cheerful, cheerful miniature about the vastness of a poor village, into which one day a bear who knows how to tell stories made his way.

  My stomach ached from painful sensations comparable to an insatiable animal hunger. The unconscious reason to recreate someone's long eyelashes framing empty gray eyes and a dark green birthmark on one pupil led to immensity. Like a black, hopeless monolith, it crossed the entire space, piercing deeply into the destroyed dirty earth in front of the exhausted and somehow happy Thuram. This was his secret. Thick drops of rain rolled down the monolith in long, whipping streams, piercing the dark night sky and as if painting the spacious panel houses in lifeless, ghostly gray robes.

  The qualifications of terms and research considerations, perpetuated by books, brilliant minds and stereotypes were silently washed away by another river of rain, causing hieroglyphs, letters, numbers and images carved on this infinitely huge and probably built by countless trillions of lives, instincts, consumptions, diseases like himself to disappear. Not all of them were mammals, space dust, thinking people, curses and others... Not all of them were born. Not everyone influenced how they once learned to eat, love, absorb, understand, act... one for the other. Like something that happened once or existed for something that appeared after, or maybe nothing happened. Like someone'sawareness one day. Absence. The bite of the jaws of a water beetle, biting through the chitin of an eight-winged argon while sitting on a thin leafy branch that continues to break from the weight. Why are there so many insects? Maybe he himself was probably one... In a past life?

  Come on. What stupidity, huh... And she herself said that she was stupid. I'm still... You don't know me well.

  Thuram recoiled in fear, trembling from the immense cold and the rain piercing his very essence, falling like sharp icy needles from the black, hopeless sky. He began to turn around slowly, so as not to provoke something uncontrollable behind him, as carefully as possible. To the tall, like all the space around, forgotten in this history, covered in the all-consuming darkness of blackness, the largest buildings towering above the rest are grotesque pointed towers. Somewhere below, above the fifteenth and seventeenth of all the eightieth columns, there was a huge round clock: golden pointers frozen on a black glass sheet. The dull yellow numbers had no definite shape or consistency. It was as if they were moving, but at the same time they were clearly visible, firmly fixed by mechanisms and internal gears, in contrast to the giant disembodied eyes peeking out with shining faded crescents from under seemingly gray and ancient gray branches accumulated in a thick whirlwind of hair. The giant's face did not exude a single intention, sensation, or emotion. From there, in the semi-darkness, only this gigantic pale head looked out, as if cut off by a thin refracted structure of an immense singularity, pushing aside its commensurately massive vertebrae, cast as if the color of silver, trembling, emerging in separate pieces of flesh along the chimeric, absorbing inexhaustible parts of the ugly existence - spine, incomparable to the tangible spaces of the seemingly familiar, but hitherto unseen underside of the universe. So bottomless, chaotically formed, as if it was a path made in the unbridled infinity of space, never having limits.

  The walls with the clock did not move. There were no lights in the windows. Why did the "Cathedral of the Humble Augutia" have to be located here? On this street. On the edge of a cliff, from where only a lifeless desert was visible, from a sea of ??black sand and collapsing yellow soil. Was it really built here on purpose? This was the idea of ??a miscalculated architect, confident that he would one day be visited by every lonely soul in this world. Or should he be convinced that doubts and regrets embody not only chaos and disorder? But also good, sincere ideas that justify any failures, falls, or crimes that have occurred..

  What about my cowardice? Don't I have the right to escape from here? Forget their names, their faces... My life.

  Baring, long lips cut through the thick pale skin of that gigantic humanoid face. The wide ovals of the eyes narrowed sharply, the cheekbones became very tense. Thuram could barely allow himself to move without feeling one sleeping eye and his body twisting as if in a meat grinder, not realizing how to manipulate his own limbs. One of them tightly holds someone’s warm hand, another one steps with bare fingers on the bottom of a shallow river, and her lips have completely dissolved in memories, which it would seem that she got rid of many years ago with the help of amnesia and many surgical operations.

  He did not feel malice or any inclinations of a merciless predator inside the mysterious and terrifying creature, which rose sharply several massive vertebrae upward in its jump. It was as if it acted mindlessly, unaware of anything other than itself. His eerie facial expression resembled a man, suggested several dozen years of Thuram’s life, demonstrated the mutilation of the militia old the body of his only close friend, revealed the true origin of all forty-six chromosomes, one of which was torn apart by the odorous mass of synthetic expansion, up to complete destruction, depriving him of the opportunity to become part of the siphirification environment, society, contact.

  Giant faded wastelands around thick pulsating eyelids obscured the entire space around, instantly sobering Thuram’s clouded consciousness, which at the last moment saw huge hard fangs stubbornly piercing the frontal lobe like mercury and heterogeneous, various distorted streams, a painful and eardrum-breaking cacophony.

  — Ren-Jitsu!

  A strong stream of wind whistled under Thuram's mutilated eyes, throwing aside his thick blood-blue tears. The terrifying silhouette of a gigantic head was blocked by the parchment of a ceremonial, in places very yellowed scroll spread in the wind, which with its entire immeasurable length cut the space into two unequal parallels. The lightning-fast movement of the parchment was divided into two parts, into which the giant head of the creature crashed into the next moment. Beautiful handwritten hieroglyphs, painted in black, in a rare combination with light ink, shot up several more times, already in four disproportionately long and amazingly strong directions, rapidly returning to two initial positions, or rather two formed by the mechanical structure of the scrolls.

  Being sealed by the ratio of the held concentration of aura and at the same time the pressure of the exquisitely recreated symbiotic armor, imprinted by the eight holiest paths, the forms of the scrolls were as if welded by the magical fire of retribution to one right and one left limb of the female guardian. In an exquisite, precise pirouette, she landed on the ground with her right foot at the moment when the scrolls completely absorbed the unknown magical writing. The moving tiny grooves trembled a little, shifting on the peculiar elbow and knee joints, framed in dark red and almost lacy velvet.

  The young portrait of the face was reflected by a few gray strands, curling to smooth shoulder blades among voluminous black whirlwinds, the two longest of which were surrounded by silky red ribbons. Her body, as delicate as the stem of a spring flower, showed no signs of fatigue, which belied her partially worn battle attire, which, from bright golden tints, accumulated into a kind of tight-fitting oriental dress with a tattered red robe around her hips, damaged by unknown blows.

  Lush eyelashes with pointed plate-like wings slowly lowered over the enchanted dark spirals of eyes that were constantly focused on the two previous attacks of the giant chimera head.

  A flash of heaviness, which had been accumulating inside for unknown how long, quietly flew out of her thin little lips. The lovely slender fingers of her left hand, clad in all-encompassing elastic gold, expertly folded into the shape of a seal above which the index and middle fingers rose.

  — Denva a pasu. - dense mechanical grooves rattled violently around the scroll in the elbow oval, a moment later from which enchanted parchment, dark as if from decomposition, rushed out. — Queen Fenghua. Please take us away from here.

  Shaking the space, moving the suffocating black sky from its place, with a massive sweep of the ridge, the creature coolly rushed towards the guard. The brutal movement of the giant vertebrae suddenly stopped all his pressure, gnawing with a small ugly beak with ugly rows of sharp, almost bleeding fangs.

  From a nearby building, which until that moment had been hidden in the shadows of despair and regret, burst in a bird comparable to the creature’s gigantic head, whose thick and almost snake-like neck, covered with thick black plumage and scales as strong as a tortoise’s shell, firmly clung to the base of the neck. The creature summoned by the guardian savagely gnawed at the distorted rotating blades of the mechanisms, pieces of hardening crimson flesh oozing unknown vital fluids, struggling to break through to the massive ones, consisting of many crossed matters. bones.

  Fierce red sparkles flashed in the narrow eyes of the terrifying bird, momentarily illuminating exactly a hundred winding directions of this space, from which winged creatures similar to it began to rapidly break out, swooping in in massive dark clouds, emitting a noisy cutting of metal. Their sharp, with some exceptions, long beaks over and over again dug into the vertebrae floundering in the air like accelerated needles, sometimes piercing the Titan’s body like bullets, tearing out acute transformations of mechanical distortions, tearing apart dense clusters of nerves, and no matter how much flesh and various matter of a hybrid nature they gnawed on their way, they could not get to the almost exposed bones.

  Luxurious fish and lion tails, stretching in outlandish maned patterns along the wide backs of the raging birds, were stuck in the already endless bloody sea of ??mixed divine colors, in which scraps of theirs and others’ flesh, muscles, tormented internal organs, ligaments, and feathers continued to sink and break. The writhing spinal body, still surrounded by hundreds of Fenghua's loyal subjects at the head, in unsuccessful attempts to escape from their grip, clumsily crushed someone's knocked out eyes, cut off paws and now wings, which mercilessly cut off the constantly distorted muscles at the top of the bone mounds mixed with dark bulging growths piercing the chest cavities multiplying veins. With rare success, Fenkhula avoided the Titan's fangs, going behind her back and digging in the fangs that cut like saws.

  The carnage flared up over moments that lasted years, months and again the shortest seconds.

  Numbness. The faded crescent-moon eyes of the Titan suddenly froze under the heavy pale eyelids of the creature, which seemed to have suddenly lost all the pain, discomfort, and stubborn attempts to escape from this fight. The look, burdened with something in appearance, peered somewhere into the distance for three, four seconds. As if an important thought had arisen. An insight descended, engulfing his entire soul, his entire existence.

  His eyes quickly shifted to one of the terrible birds with a shell and luxurious wings in patterns of a peculiar swampy green flame, again digging under his skin. Opening his half-human mouth wide, he bit her entire body with a lightning-fast jerk, making an indescribable turn around its axis, and with the next action tearing off Fenghua’s immensely wide black wing. For a long time. With zeal. Making every effort. The remaining eighty-nine loyal subjects continued to attack the giant head with redoubled force, tearing out silvery maned hair, trying to gouge out eyes, tear out thick gums, mercilessly, selflessly splitting their beaks on strong mechanical cheekbones.

  Fenuha waved her remaining wing widely, covering the agitated female guard and the guardsman behind her, who was barely destroyed to the ground. At the last moment, the summoned Queen of the Hundred Birds tenderly said goodbye to her friend, giving her a warm, anger-free look.

  “Fenghua...” the woman said silently, breathlessly, extending her left hand to the wall of a devastated, old factory shelter that had formed in front of her.

  The former sense of time and the usual perception of space gradually resumed in the rhythmic circulation of blood, the transformation of oxygen in the lungs, the feeling of fine dust and grains of sand between the fingers. Thuram timidly opened his eyelids, finding a female guard frozen in an ideal lotus position, better known to the Tuenshi people by the nickname “Vishna”. Her hands froze in one of the forms of seals, revealing their damaged aura clusters from which unknown black energy emanated. Now her right arm and left leg have been replaced with like ghostly transformed prosthetics, exactly repeating the totality of her combat attire. Translucent greenish-blue streams harmoniously intertwined around ghostly and corporeal limbs, in countless flexible threads through the plates, mechanical grooves and calmly developing raised hair. Gloomy blackness was forcefully squeezed out of the reddened energy funnels of her fluctuating aura, like thick lumps of pus and infection from groaning bare scars, looking like fresh wounds that were gradually healing and tightly pulled together by magic.

  - Didn’t I... die? - Tyuram responded to her convulsively, touching his face and looking around at his completely healthy, anatomically correct body, which had previously been monstrously distorted by a long strange journey.

  Vishna opened her wide eyelashes, not distracted from her practice and showing the guardsman due attention and respect.

  “The construct of your life was almost destroyed by the deed of our brother.” - she said calmly. “I found you torturing yourself for sin.” Now I tried to return you to your previous form, but not everything is within my power.

  - What brother!? What... What kind of monster was there? I'm talking about that... Head. — his face immediately contorted in horror.

  - "Rebirth of the Middle Titan." — the woman nodded carefully, finishing her self-healing process. “Either he or his relatives can hear us now.” Therefore, I will not call them strangers, since I do not want to offend them. And I ask you to politely address them in the future.

  Remembering that brutal massacre with her summoned beast, Thuram doubted a little and looked around, sighing with fleeting relief for a long time. One of the long underground tunnels, once a night trading point with many discounts on any goods. Once upon a time, old furniture was abandoned here, kiosks and small department stores were empty, covered with layers of dust and cobwebs that still trembled from time to time. His attention was suddenly drawn by a colleague who had silently crept up. Looking into Thuram's eyes, for a long time he vomited from his pelican mouth three small human children, curled up in the fetal position and as if in a long, sound sleep under a warm woolen blanket.

  “I don’t care about them... They’re nothing.” - Thuram muttered angrily, rising to his feet and constantly watching the children who had fallen to the ground, huddling together to keep warm. - At that time... I was much younger than now. My inexperience probably became the reason for their death. I have always justified myself with this, but... What would they have become if they had survived? I don’t remember the color of their hair anymore...” He took a closer look at the girl in a fluffy knitted sweater with large round buttons around her throat tied with a scarf. - Skin tone. - they definitely weren’t breathing, but for some reason their bodies seemed alive, breathing like the rest of the world around him. — Their thoughts about father and mother, grandparents. Friends. About what they see when they wake up in the garden. — two boys, as if forever faithful guards and protectors, hugged their exhausted sister, covered in blood. - Their eyes. Their actions. Acquaintance. Classes... Everything that has never happened for more than fifty years. “Thuram bared his teeth in disappointment, trying to hold back a shameful smile. - Ed... The only thing I can say about these children. Forever remaining unknown to anyone... So this is what I think, the three of them were about six, eight years old. And that's all.

  Vishna's face was dominated by humility, with which she listened to fragments of one of his sad stories.

  It really happened ALL? What they had, or only he had, in the whole world, which had forever lost three very rare names without three vowels, with one apostrophe and a hard zir sign. Unknown red letters curl in the sleepless prolongation of life, among sharpened pieces of hanging wood, wooden toys and plates of hot broth, at the bottom of which a blackened milk tooth with a handful of salt and sugar always continues to melt. Thin little hands each time drop one plate after another, as if it were a fiction implanted in them by someone else that they could never get rid of. As a primitive psychological vice, it will continue to fetter nerve endings, twisting fingers, bones, and very rarely dreams. There will be so little room in their selection that they will not notice anyone or anything else. Thoughts become confused, pierce the frontal lobe with the thick healthy teeth of Titan, pouring out other emotions, sensations and subsequently a painful shock, like a liquid decaying catharsis that one first experienced and then lost.

  Vishna looked in amazement at the thick lump of flesh formed by a two-meter, infinitely deep spiral that almost covered her last one hundred and eighteen years of earthly life in the east of the empire, the left side of the body and throat, the last “work of a knight and corals.”

  With a strong jerk, she turned away, jumping into unknown spaces of space, already less similar to the old shelter. On the other side, there is the same abandoned furniture with slot machines, burnt-out premises and... Prisons that never existed before her. Lifeless but bright illusion. Like providence descending from the halls of the absurd, maddened mind of one of the destroyed parts of the brain.

  “Since when could this shelter become so abandoned? Impossible...” Vishna’s thought flashed before she felt a massive body approaching behind her.

  Perhaps she will not even have time to dodge, or perhaps she has already become part of the all-consuming annihilation of these powerful creatures. Her thoughts lag behind her sensations, and her sensations lag behind her intentions. Logic has become dull. Only six students and fourteen simplest techniques remained in consciousness, among which there was not even a defensive one left... It was as if she was evaporating with all her vital nature, being and will.

  One of the fleeting moments of the writhing density of the atmosphere. One moment, if you follow the dark spirals of her eyes. The massive accumulation of aura was concentrated in both legs to the fullest extent possible, leaving the rest of the body completely vulnerable. The tips of the mechanical sole come into contact with massive and looming thick teeth that extend from the wide-open maw of the Medium Titan's gigantic head. His right distorted temple hits the dodgy silhouette of the guard who has barely jumped over him, hitting his thigh with a roar and thereby throwing Vishnu far away.

  Like writhing tongues of flame, ugly long shadows begin a simple dance, wriggling, jumping and prancing around human sincerely with such force that bright yellow sparks were scattered under them.

  Thin fingers from the energy flow touched thin lips, picking up the first drops of crimson-red blood. Vishna raised a heavy gaze at the gigantic spine of the creature, which was probably preparing to pounce on her again. This is what happens. There are meters, centimeters, an instant between them...

  - Master Luan Niao! — the boy’s cheerful voice can be heard near the steps strewn with orange leaves, where the aroma of tea does not reach and where a smiling young man in a gray yukata remains standing. — Will you go to the festival today!?

  With an ingratiating look, he waits for the desired answer, with which the mentor, reclining with a warm blanket and a drink in a chair, is currently waiting.

  “I can’t leave the temple unattended.” — a very young girl shakes her head in disagreement, directing her gaze to tall, slender rows of trees, covered with cool dew and bright leaves coming off, going along a long winding path. - What about your comrades?

  - They'll all go. Even Miori agreed today... - with these words, he turned his gaze to the rhythmic cutting sounds heard over and over again next to the long tiled walls.

  In a snow-white yukata, a short young woman with a sword tirelessly struck the air, honing several complex movements that were most difficult for her. She turned around sharply when she heard her name, and when she saw her mentor with a joyful smile, she immediately ran to her. Vishna slowly walked out of the blooming stone pavilion, as well as their temple, covered with ancient split scars inside of which it was never sad to be next to these talented and pure-hearted children. Something new must always be reborn from the decayed old. It always has been and always will be.

  “Don’t overdo it with the blade, Miori.” The hour of training was already over. — the girl answered politely in response to the student’s bow.

  - I can't stop. Otherwise, this month I will not catch up with the others in their skill. — She frowned her thick eyebrows a little depressed, lowering her head. “I don’t want to become a burden to everyone who gave me a place here...

  Vishna gently hugged the top of her head with his completely bandaged right hand, dispelling the girl’s fears with a sincere smile.

  - Remember. First of all, you learn to protect what is dear to each of you. What is priceless for your families, for our people. It's never too late to find new strength in yourself and reveal your talents. You are the most gifted students. And therefore your time will always be in abundance.

  The eleven students gathered behind the wall watched them carefully, and some were inspired by the ardor of the youngest student among them all.

  - Well done Miori! - one of the boys shouted.

  - You will definitely succeed!

  The shouts of encouragement immediately confused the girl, who was spinning her head around in utter confusion.

  “Miori...” Vishna suddenly said convulsively, whose tired gaze fell

  tears

  ***

  The female guard found herself in the middle of small ruins of the former “Nihonto” that was still recognizable to her. The celestial structures of buildings so far went up to the purple stars, somewhere slipping between endlessly long bridges and tunnels into which deactivated rail traction systems plunged. The devastated spacious parks were drained by disaster, thick fog and insight, which, having lost, risks losing one’s own organs.

  Impregnated with leprous fermentation, chemical fumes of foreign organs and the aromas of sweet fruits, the wind scattered her eyelashes in barely perceptible gusts, tearing them off her thin motionless eyelids. In small silver sparks they fell to the ground behind her, cutting through the gastronomic debris of the massifs and the thick soil beneath them, exposing trembling mineral rocks. Like spreading algae with tentacles. Earthworms writhing in agony, crossed from moisture, earthen soil, gas waste. The previous universe gradually crumbled, evaporated or disappeared, being transferred by a new form of life, sweeping away everything around like an endless wave.

  - Thank you... I was pleased to see them. — Vishna nodded gratefully, feeling the aura weakening. The strength is leaving her spirit, drying up from her body. The mind dissolves from touching the new reality, which is constantly distorted without any order, distorting the former nature of this world. - But I'm not going to end this story... like that.

  She stood on her right foot, creating a seal with her surviving left hand, pieces of armor missing from the collision, revealing thin, scratched fingers.

  It was right in front of her, perched above one of countless grotesque structures, surrounded by stories depicted in cave paintings, decorated with a global palette of minimalist art, erected in a circle of ancient and moldy monoliths with long-motionless statues of mythical creatures. Behind their massive marble silhouettes, the brightest star among the rest was descending, inevitably sinking under the bottom of the milky pink breathing ocean.

  The one hundred and eighty meter tall, complex athletic body turned slightly with its broad, sinewy shoulders. The massive tips of dark marble fingers touched tall flowering trees, monuments hidden in the fog, covering with rough cracked skin the highway of dreams split in two, unfulfilled and now disappeared.

  The long arm of the average Titan supported its gigantic hybrid head with the back side, gracefully flexible metacarpal bones barely touching the thick, maned skin of the neck covered with alien skin. The frozen faded crescents in the uncontrollable boiling multicolor of boundless existence slowly turned towards Vishna, freezing on her silhouette in a serene gaze innumerable in contradictions.

  The crackle of tearing wet fabric in a tangible void. Quartz melted in the fire, crumbling into myriads of grains of sand. Zealously rushing into consciousness, the sounds of deforming flesh pass through the inexhaustible matter of this world, exploding all the stars around, evaporating clouds, destroying the chaotically changing order of nature, partially flowing out in scarlet and green-blue branches of stem cells almost withered to the ground from the subcutaneous armor of a woman, exhaustedly collapsed to her knees on a rumpled woolen tablecloth.

  While the woven fabric of many voices, body movements, willful reading, attempts to contemplate the all-consuming black contradiction, emotional formations spreading through the organs, metalloid minerals, skin-tight dresses, movements of the soft palate, a deafening physical urge deforming the auricle bleeding from overexertion - the neck, around which the whole is covered with rough skin - was falling apart into pieces. instantly fell in long layers, stretching towards the chest, knees and feet, revealing breathing red flesh.

  The Middle Titan once again looked at the human being below, opening his long lips, disfigured by structural splits and mineral distortions, which could at any moment swallow the entire surrounding world.

  Sight. Unbreakable. Devoted. Deprived of any meaning for a person, consequences, changes, absence just once... Together with this face, the giant head of the Titan suddenly and sharply fell from the gigantic powerful shoulders, shaking grains of sand in the air, collapsing onto a new multiplying surface among the stuck layers of suffocating smoke, cloying dust and liquid vapors, disappearing from the field of view of the newly risen female guardian. Following the fallen head hung indescribable and colossal grotesque mechanisms, lumpy massive vertebrae and pieces of flesh crossed with many opposing materials, torn in places, emitting a dim light, screams of all existing forms of life, from sea microbes, layers of dust under the nails of a starving turtle, right up to animals, people and mainly birds, heartbreaking and invading under alien eyelids, eyelids advancing in a cacophony towards the true believer, wishing to devour and destroy spreading a new alien environment in which there will be no place for prayers, a tongue in contact with water, bright warm light and three-section heart valves.

  “Moving with only one head again? Or is he just having fun with me?..” - the scrupulous voice inside, as expected, remained unanswered.

  Collision. The painful contact of bloody skin with the solid walls of buildings leaves thick traces of dissolving miasma, gradually melting the earth like a thick surface of water and plunging into the inexhaustible depths of space.

  A few meters after the crawling Titan, a large thick scroll in a traditional red binding hit the flying car door. Above his maned head, a long strip of enchanted parchment flashed, covered with a bright energy glow, from which a moment later the mouth of a giant lizard, covered with green scales, emerged, instantly digging with sharp claws and a long chitinous tail into the humanoid back of the head and scratched cheekbones, biting through with a palisade of instantly erupted bone teeth in both eyes of the Titan.

  - Baby Tsen-Tsen! Leave! - Vishna shouted as she landed on the ground.

  Behind her back, a parchment with symbols that had increased in size comparable to the summoned beast was also grounded, into which the monstrous head of a lizard immediately darted.

  But her tail was immediately grabbed by the Titan’s hand, stretched out in a twisted, ugly hyperbole, the opposite side of which, made up of many crossed fingers, like a stretched even guillotine, instantly closed together with the other end of the parchment, with a powerful movement of the limb cutting off the ferocious mouth of Tsen-Tsen, which had grinned for such insolence, grinding the neck sprout with the tips of the remaining paws without claws.

  Instant. Subordination. Dimension-distorting proliferation. Coughing up blood and the remnants of oxygen, Vishna tightly clasps his fingers with his energy hand, plunging his whole body and consciousness into a flow united by both parts, actively spreading from her fighting positioned body, reminiscent of a low-slung bird with long crossed legs, one of which moves forward with its front foot in order to outline the border in front of them.

  — Denva. Sizen... - the dark spirals of her eyes flowed out of almost snow-white glasses, stained with wounds, briefly pouring onto her chest, speckled with mechanical damage, from where it poured out in a thick snow-white-black wet breeze her own dimension, embodied by the will of her spiritual construct. — Hoshi...

  A star pierced the approaching head of Titan with a dazzlingly bright yellow arrow, tearing apart with a warm mystical light the bursting cosmic density, rapidly covering itself with the same light but tiny rays. Their red, crimson, orange and dark blue directions of reverse natural energy pull away his ripped left cheekbone, ear and chimeric cervical vertebrae, with a blinding heat shining through his rough marble skin around his head like a dazzlingly bright lantern, the faded lenses of the eyes wriggling in layers, thick dissected teeth, burning in bluish-white maned gray shaggy bonfire

  — Mother. — the last fragment of the spell sounded as a painful conclusion, broken by a heavy wet cough.

  The tips of her fingers, burned with magic down to the deep flesh, convulsively touched the dark pulsating energy, touching one of its countless subtle circulations.

  Like endlessly twisting humpbacked tree branches, sharp dark thorns grabbed one part of the creature after another, with a strong grip closing with spiky, spreading roots around a massive chimeric neck, crushing the bleeding mechanisms, with long and gradually solidifying movements, tearing apart the gigantic head, enveloped in the cosmic heat of natural energy.

  All the sounds of the world gradually died down, choking at the bottom of the plunging dark branches, inevitably dragging behind them a pale marble candle with a strikingly bright and still emitting warmth breathing bloody fire. Pale white circles on the water slowly spread across the vast gloomy veil until they crashed into the destroyed lonely shore. The sky around was engulfed in black and purple pulsations, as if everything around was placed in someone’s bottomless stomach.

  Vishna slowly turned towards the muffled strange sounds, which seemed like an earthquake approaching her with every second. The blood-green veil spreading in the darkness was covered with strong ripples, from under whose layered wet surface wide nails appeared overgrown with lumps of multiplying and partially leprous flesh. Moments later, a gigantic burgundy-light human hand, flowing in thick, dense rivers of crossed blood, rose above Vishnu, overcoming the entire universe with an infinitely boundless scope, powerfully falling on the last moments of the former form of life of a helpless creature, humbly lowering its eyelids.

  embrace

  red moon

  smooth handwriting

  leftover white rice in a pink bowl

  disappointment..

  horizontal blow, six millimeters from the heart..

  ..they won’t miss

  forgiveness...

  The dark sclera of the young woman, bitten by blood needles, fearfully looked around at the deep non-overlapping cracks around the pale, sometimes rough but smooth skin. In the immobilized giant hands, she felt herself at the bottom of a bowl, woven on both sides from long, strong fingers. From behind one particularly wide crack, the silhouette of a much older young woman appeared in a snow-white yukata, the hem of which was now smeared with crimson-pink and black spots. Many scars and fresh wounds that healed over time gave a contradictory maturity to the small and neat outlines of her face, long neck and thin, very fragile-looking shoulders. The girl on the other side smiled dreamily with her eyes closed, composing quiet musical notes.

  “She... She has grown so beautifully...” the woman shed tears, shrinking her whole body from discomfort, feeling how the fingers under her naked, powerless essence were tremblingly covered with warmth. - This is my sin...

  She timidly looked up, unable to see anyone’s warm gaze. As if her consciousness was unable to see the true form of the one who now carefully holds her in his careful hands. Endless maned hair that was darker than the night itself surrounded warm palms. Soft long lips lovingly kissed the forehead of this slightly frightened, but now calmed down man. Like a mother who would never let her or those close to her heart be harmed. Driving away all doubts, fears, regrets. The last musical note slowly evaporated, and Titanide led the man into a gradually settling pleasant sleep.

  Among the highest mountains, where the coldest rains fall to the ground, a thin tree of charred dark bark with pale pink petals will bloom. An animal stabbed to death with rusty knives will be buried under it. The smell of death will pass the high hills, overtake the winds, before the white star descends into the ocean for the last time, it will overtake the last surviving creature in the world, enveloping its dying hemispheres with the gift of understanding.