“What… what just happened?!”

Lan struggled to pull himself out from the heap of debris. Yin’s earlier blow had dealt him serious damage.

He looked around the empty corridor.

Aside from a faint whimper from Bubble on the opposite end, there was no one.

But he was sure—right before he blacked out—he’d seen that black-haired human.

And Yin… where was Yin?

—!?

The once-normal hallway suddenly wavered with a strange distortion of light.

Lan’s jaw fell open in shock.

A blade of blue light tore through the air, splitting the space before him—

and from that rift, the black-haired human stepped out, as though the blue radiance had formed his body itself.

“This—this is impossible! What are you?!”

Lan had never believed in anything supernatural or metaphysical…

but today, he was reconsidering every conviction.

He stared at the human, frozen.

“Lan.”

The black-haired human lifted his eyes.

Faint traces of blue still glimmered in them.

“Don’t panic. I won’t harm you.”

“Where’s Yin? What happened to him?”

Lan swallowed hard, staring at the man whose body was covered in wounds.

“He won’t be doing anything anymore,” Yao said weakly.

Lan finally noticed how pale he was—so pale he could see the veins under his skin.

The man’s legs suddenly gave out.

He collapsed to his knees as blood spilled endlessly from the hole in his chest. Even pressing against the wound did nothing.

“You’re injured—! Are you alright?!”

Lan rushed forward and grabbed his shoulder.

The injury at the center of Yao’s chest was severe.

“Can humans regenerate their circulation pathways? Cut off blood flow to the heart! You’ll bleed out at this rate!”

If I could do that, I wouldn’t be human, Yao thought bitterly as blood choked his throat.

His consciousness blurred.

Am I really… dying?

A strange calm settled over him.

“What’s going on? You don’t even have that basic ability?”

Lan’s panic rose as more blood pooled beneath them.

He realized the truth—this human didn’t have any auxiliary circulatory functions like a Teleopean.

There was no choice.

He wasn’t a doctor, but he’d learned basic emergency care.

Lan pulled a compact medical device from his subspace pouch and activated it.

Pen-sized emitters unfolded, projecting a medical radiation field over Yao’s wound—stimulating cellular growth at high speed.

Even though he wasn’t Teleopean, the wound began to regenerate rapidly before Lan’s eyes.

“Please… don’t die on me.”

Lan muttered through clenched teeth.

If this human died, Chen would absolutely lose his mind.

Raising his head, Lan looked into the control room.

White electric sparks burst everywhere. Condensation fluid leaked across the floor. Consoles were shredded.

The entire room looked like it had been ravaged by a storm.

Chen and Lian’s battle had reached a fever pitch.

Neither could kill the other.

Their powers held each other in a deadly equilibrium.

If either withdrew for even a moment, the accumulated telekinetic force would tear their own body apart.

“Stop this! If we continue, we’ll both die!”

Lian barked, breath ragged.

They had been locked for too long. Any further and both would burn out their central nervous systems.

“If I die, I’m dragging you with me, Lian!”

“You lunatic!”

Chen laughed—a sharp, mocking sound.

“Well, I am supposed to be crazy.”

Lian ground his teeth, then suddenly glanced toward the door—something sly flashing in his eyes.

“Is that so? Then you’ll just watch that black-haired human die and do nothing?”

His gaze shifted deliberately.

Chen followed it—

And saw the dying human lying in the doorway.

Their black eyes, hazy and unfocused, were looking toward him.

Chen’s own eyes—once pitch black from battle—flashed gold again.

That instant of distraction was all Lian needed.

He struck.

A tidal wave of telekinetic force tore through the air.

“AHHHHH—!!”

Chen tried to dodge, but too late.

The attack hit him full-force.

His right arm—shoulder—and part of his chest were obliterated.

Golden blood mist filled the air.

“Gh—!”

Chen collapsed, struggling to rise.

But with half his torso gone, pain crushed him.

His hair was suddenly yanked upward.

Through gritted teeth, Chen glared defiantly at his attacker.

“Your predecessor glared at me the same way,” Lian hissed, lips curling.

“You and your predecessor… nothing but prey.”

Chen’s voice was low, in a language similar to Teleopean but distinctly alien:

“Fasi vet’d lann ni tou sa yii.”

Not a friendly phrase.

Lian’s face twisted with fury.

He flung Chen like a ragdoll.

Chen slammed into the voltage regulator by the exit and slid limp to the ground.

“You think provoking me will let you die quickly? Keep dreaming.”

Lian approached, each step heavy with predatory intent.

Chen’s breathing hitched.

Humiliation burned through him.

He calculated attack vectors—angles—timing—weaknesses.

Anything.

In the doorway, Lan trembled violently.

Lian’s pressure crushed his body like a vice; he couldn’t even move a finger.

Xiao… where are you?

Hurry—!!

“Chen…”

A weak whisper drifted through the chaos.

Lan looked down.

The gravely wounded human moved his lips ever so slightly.

Yao was less than a meter from the door—close enough that Chen could hear him clearly.

“You… believe me?”

His fading voice trembled.

—Always—

Chen answered through telepathy.

“Good…”

Yao blinked sluggishly.

His eyes could no longer see.

“Use your telekinesis… aim it at the control room window… Can you break it?”

The control room’s “glass” was a hyper-strengthened transparent alloy—harder than diamond, designed to protect the command deck from exterior attacks.

If it shattered…

the room would be exposed to open space.

A death sentence.

—Understood—

“Teleopeans were always my kind’s prey,” Lian said triumphantly, drawing closer.

“Millions of years ago—and now again. This is natural order.”

Chen’s lips curled faintly.

“Nothing is absolute.”

His eyes turned pure black.

“This is the real natural order.”

Lian stiffened—

because Chen wasn’t aiming at him.

“Wha—?!”

CRACK—!!!

A razor-sharp fracture shot across the reinforced viewing panel—

then a second—

then a spiderweb bloom of expanding stress lines.

It failed, catastrophically.

A section the size of a dinner plate blew outward first,  fragments shooting into space like bullets.

And then the real physics hit.

A pressure drop from standard Teleopean atmosphere to vacuum in 0.2 seconds.

Air detonated in an instant.

A hurricane-force blast erupted from the breach.

Hypersonic speeds ripping through the control room as the atmosphere escaped in a single violent pulse.

Loose panels, cables, tools, shards— everything not bolted down launched toward open space along the pressure gradient.

Lian was one of them.

His body jerked off the floor instantly, spine snapping into a horizontal line from the force.

He slammed shoulder-first into a console, then the decompression wave hurled him straight toward the void.

“Chen · Xing · Chen—!!”

His final scream was ripped apart mid-syllable as the vacuum stole every vibrating molecule of sound.

Then, silence.

A silence so complete it felt like the universe holding its breath.

Outside the breach, something impossible bloomed.

At first it was only a distortion—

a place where starlight bent wrong, curving as if pressed against invisible glass.

Then the bending intensified.

Lines smeared.

Geometry warped.

Space itself began to sag.

“Chen!! Grab my hand!!”

With Lian’s telekinetic pressure gone, Lan lunged forward, wings flattening from the wind shear, tail-spike embedding deep into the metal wall to anchor himself.

He caught Chen with one hand—

and Yao’s collapsing body with the other.

A second decompression gust hammered them toward the breach—

but Lan’s tail remained locked like a harpoon in the hull plating.

Outside, the distortion deepened, the first stage of gravitational lensing pulling starlight sideways in luminous arcs.

“What… is that…?”

Lan’s voice shook.

The bending light folded inward, collapsing around a forming sphere — its surface a perfect, light-eating black.

“The… horizon…?”

Lan’s breath hitched.

“That’s an event horizon. That’s a black hole—HERE?!”

“My… sibiling’s work…”

Yao whispered.

He had turned on his temporal locator.

The effect was immediate: a micro–Einstein-Rosen singularity,

a tiny engineered black hole holding itself together by sheer mathematical defiance.

It would last only seconds.

Seconds were enough.

Because Lian would survive decompression.

He would survive telekinetic shockwaves.

He would survive weapons and vacuum and wounds that should be fatal.

But a black hole?

There is no surviving that.

The event horizon expanded, devouring torn debris, shattered consoles, and the last traces of atmosphere.

The starlight behind it stretched into a luminous crescent—

gravitational lensing twisting reality itself.

“…Finally…”

Chen stared at Yao’s face, ghost-pale, veins visible through the skin.

Yao met his gaze, a weak breath escaping his lips.

“…Yes. Finally.”