novelapdf The Ninth Calamity
The Ninth Calamity
In the ungraspable vastness of the multiversal fabric, where the infinite threads of reality intertwine and are severed, there exists a record that no mortal, and few gods, dare to consult.(UUUUUUUUUMMMMMMM—GZZZZZZZT—KRRRRRRRR!)
For the Ancient Beings, those who observed the first blink of light and the last sigh of the void, existence is not measured by peace, but by the magnitude of the Calamities... These are not simple threats; they are existential anomalies, errors in the code of creation that possess the intrinsic capacity to define catastrophic outcomes by their mere presence.
(SHHHHHIIIIIIII—KRA-KOOOOM!!)
And among them, twenty positions exist. Twenty names etched into the fear of the omniscient. Among the steps of that pantheon of horror lies the Tree of Misfortune, whose roots do not feed on earth, but on the tragedies of entire civilizations; the Chaos Dragon, whose breath is not fire, but pure entropy that unravels the laws of physics; and the Rock of Origin, an entity whose inertia is so absolute that its awakening would mean the reboot of all matter.
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Even among those aberrations exist Authentic Death, which awaits the end of every form of existence, and the Space-Time Dragon, whose chronology is a labyrinth where the beginning and the end are the same point.
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However, the danger of these existences is not static. Due to the instability of these beings, their power fluctuates, vibrates, and intensifies according to the point in their own timeline; nevertheless, despite this, their essence is immutable. Those 20 existences are tumors in causality—things that should not be, but against all odds, existed...
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Because of this, those beings were enumerated according to their scale of danger to existence and its continuity.
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And there, in the Ninth Position, etched with fire and blood in the annals of time, are the Seven Demon Ladies of Sin.
"No... it’s not possible!"
Each of the Demon Ladies was a metaphysical incarnation of systemic errors, with each one representing a tragedy that was altered and twisted until it became something beyond all logic.
"W-with a single hand...?!"
Now, in the present of the Virtual Dimension universe, the scream of an elite hunter tore through the air, but his voice sounded small and insignificant against the magnitude of what he was witnessing.
(BWAAAAAA-HROOOOOMMM-GZZZZT!!!!)
In the sky, a nuclear sun had attempted to be born.
"... Compression."
In that place, the warheads had detonated in a perfect sequence, designed to incinerate every cell of the anomaly.
"And condensation... Right?"
But the fire did not expand.
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Instead, Raina, with the calmness of someone drawing a curtain, simply raised a hand.
(Zzzzzzt... Bzzzzzt... VROOOOM!)
Before the wide-eyed, disbelieving survivors, the destructive energy of millions of tons of TNT—the heat that should have melted the entire island—was isolated.
"It is more complex than it seems."
A psychic barrier, so dense it was nearly opaque, surrounded the chain of explosions.
(GRRRRR-RR-NNNNGG-FWAAAAA!!)
But the nuclear power was not dissipated; instead, it was compressed.
"She... she is bottling up the end of the world..."
Raina was forcing humanity's most destructive force to collapse upon itself, trapping it in a bubble of absolute will.
"...."
Her red eyes did not pull away from the sphere of contained fire, watching the fury of split atoms as if they were mere fireflies trapped in a jar, while she seemed to be speaking to the void.
(FRRRR-BOOOOOMSHHH!!)
In that place, the psychic pressure was so high that the space around her hand began to crack, revealing glimpses of the outer void.
"A waste...?"
As a result, the silence that followed the containment was not one of peace, but of absolute terror.
"Give it shape?"
Raina was not satisfied with stopping the end; she decided to redefine it.
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And with a tortuous slowness, she began to close her hand.
"... A spear... Or an axe...?"
The movement of her fingers seemed to drag the laws of thermodynamics along with them.
"That's right... Why not both?"
The mass of critical energy—a captive sun of incalculable heat—began to writhe, moaning under the weight of a psionic pressure that did not allow a single photon to escape her control.
(VRRRRRRRRRR-ZZZZZZZZ-KKK-KRAAAAAAAA!!)
Immediately after, the sphere of fire and radiation was forced into a centripetal spiral.
"IT CAN'T BE!!"
"IS SHE...?!"
"... A-aah... How can she...?"
Space-time around her fist curved in such a way that light itself began to crystallize.
"Report now! What the hell is she doing?!"
The white glow of the warheads was devoured, transforming into a fluctuating crimson—a solid substance born from the agony of atoms and the agony of Will.
(SHHHHHIIIIIIIII-KRRR-BB-BOOOOOOOOMMM!!!)
What was happening had lost all sense of logic as the horror of what they were witnessing settled into the hearts of everyone present.
"..."
Under Raina's impassive gaze, the energy shrank in size, gaining density until it reached a state of matter that did not belong to that universe.
(CLAC-CLAC-KRAAAA-STCHHHHH!!)
What was once an explosion capable of erasing a continent was now being forced to adopt a defined shape.
"If I may, I think it needs a name."
In that moment, that murmur was lost in a burst of psychic static that made the ears of everyone present bleed, as the energy finally collapsed, forging a halberd of divine proportions.
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The resulting weapon vibrated with a metaphysical bloodlust.
"Can you think of something?"
Its blade glowed with a violent crimson that pulsed rhythmically, streaked with incandescent orange veins and violet flashes that betrayed the instability of the nuclear energy composing it.
"... I see... It's a good name."
It was a physical anomaly: a weapon made of time, heat, and hatred.
(Fwoooooosh!! Sssssshhhhhh!)
But completely unfazed despite this, Raina extended her hand, and the halberd, recognizing its creator, flew toward her.
(BWAAAAAA-HROOOOOMMM-GZZZZZ-BOOM!!!)
As she closed her hand around the shaft, a violet shockwave swept across the battlefield, instantly disintegrating the clouds and leaving the sky in absolute darkness, illuminated only by the lethal glow of her new tool of judgment.
"From now on, your name shall be..."
Standing at last, observing the weapon she herself had birthed from nuclear fire, her lips barely moved to christen the miracle born from the ashes.
"{KATA-STROPHÉ EUDOKIA}"
Thus, the moment the name was uttered, the weapon ceased to fluctuate.
(KRRRR-WHOOOOOOOOOOO-SHHHHHHH!!!)
Raina adjusted her grip on the weapon, feeling the vibration of nuclear energy turned into servitude.
"I will treasure it."
Satisfied, her lips curled into a faint smile, an expression of terrifying beauty that clashed with the surrounding environment.
(... Now, there is only one thing left to do.)
And without looking back, ignoring the fire that still tried to lick at her heels, she resumed her advance toward Mayuri.
"Damn it... DAMN IT!"
Meanwhile, miles away in the command bunker, the sound of a fist slamming against metal echoed with the force of helplessness.
(Tum-tum! Tum-tum! Tum-tum!)
In that place, the Coalition commander struck the control desk again and again, knuckles bloodied, watching how his best card had become the toy of his executioner.
(I must kill her, I must kill her, I must kill her.... Why must I kill her... She is a threat... Why... Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her!!)
His face was a mask of pure despair, the expression of a man who had just realized he was trying to put out a forest fire with a glass of water while confusion seized his thoughts.
(Zzzzzzt! Bzzzzzt! Zzzzzzt!)
Beyond comprehension, Calamities possess a terrifying property: Inevitability.
(It has to be now... If we don't erase her from existence in this precise microsecond, not a single sane thought will remain on this planet. The reports don't lie: her presence is not an attack, it is a reconfiguration of reality. The soldiers no longer distinguish friend from foe... civilians in the outlying cities have begun to tear off their own skin...)
You can change the course of rivers, you can move mountains, or murder the pawns on the board, but the final result is a universal constant.
(Psychometric estimates indicate that her influence is exponential. If she is collapsing the psyche of six hundred million right now, in ten minutes it will be the entire hemisphere. We are in an era hanging by a thread, a government that barely maintains order through force and propaganda... if she keeps breathing, the social structure will dissolve like sugar in acid. There will be no revolution, only an entropic chaos where humanity devours itself in a frenzy of induced dementia.)
No matter how many threads of causality you try to pull; the tapestry always ends up drawing the same figure of destruction.
(...She must be killed. Not because she is a threat, but because her eyes are too red. Her throat must be slit because the silence she leaves in her wake is an insult. I want to see that smile go out... I want to feel the crunch of her spine even if it means my arms turn to ash. The objective doesn't matter... the government doesn't matter... only the pleasure of seeing nothingness where she is now. Kill her... kill her... kill her just because, because the void is sweeter than her existence.)
Throughout 1,508,672,94 failed attempts, across different timelines and under infinite variables, the result was always the same: the birth of Chaos. Those records of millions of failures did not belong to the limited history of man. It was not the generals nor the scientists who sweated before the imminence of the end, but the Systems, the Abstract Entities, and the Watchers of Causality. Beings aware of the imposed "rules" and what was at stake should they fail.
(WWUUUUOOOMMM—...—KR-KR-KRRIIIIIIIIII!!!)
Entire lineages had been slaughtered, planets erased from the timeline, and physical laws rewritten 150,867,294 times, all for the sole purpose of preventing the "result" from manifesting.
"Commander, the preparations are ready!"
But every time they tried to prune the branch of Calamity, the tree of reality simply grew toward the same nightmare direction.
".... Do it."
The conclusion these abstract beings reached was as cold as it was terrifying: a Calamity cannot be stopped with order, because Calamity is the rupture of order itself.
"I don't care what we have to offer!"
In an act of absolute desperation, seizing the void left by the disappearance of Paradox, they decided to force a fracture in existential coherence.
"Perform the invocation ritual...!!"
They chose to pit one Calamity against another, throwing one error against another, hoping that, in the clash of two paradoxes, the universe would simply... prevail.
"NOW!!"
In the Coalition’s command plaza—which was nothing more than a physical pawn of these superior entities—the icy blue invocation circle was not bringing something from that world.
(BWAAAAAA-HROOOOOMMM-GZZZZT!!!!)
It was opening a wound into another time and space, acting as a beacon.
(Zzzzzzt! Bzzzzzt! VROOOOOM!!)
Thus, the sound emanating from the center was not a scream, but the noise of a million pages of reality being torn out at the same time.
(Ss-shhh-st... clac... clac-st!)
The icy blue glow did not fade; instead, it began to thicken, transforming from pure light into a viscous and dark substance that defied gravity, while a dry, organic sound emerged of something growing where life should not exist.
(Sh-sh-sshhhrrrr-st-st-st!!)
From the epicenter of the ritual, thorns of an oxidized sapphire began to sprout—a degraded gem that seemed to have been torn from a forgotten stratum of hell.
(KRRRR-SHHHHH-ST-ST-ST!!!)
Those thorns connected to vines as dark as obsidian that twisted like stinging veins, pumping an essence that corrupted the air on contact.
(SHRRRRRR-VROOOOM-KRRRR-SHHHHH!!!)
And from that invocation circle, to face one sin, they called...
(FRRRR-BOOOOOMSHHH!!)
... Upon a new sin.