The air still hummed with the aftermath of shattered time, the frozen commuters unaware of the horror that had nearly taken one of their own. The girl, now unconscious but unharmed, lay gently placed on a nearby bench—her memory of this moment already fading like a bad dream.
Fred stood over the three Dānavas, his boot resting on the horned one's chest, pinning it to the ground like a specimen under glass. The other two twitched nearby, limbs broken, black ichor seeping into the cracks of the station floor.
The horned Dānava snarled up at him, its void-like eyes filled with hate and something deeper—*fear.*
***"What are you?"*** it rasped, its voice like grinding stones.
Fred's expression didn't change. **"Parasites don't get to question the Celestial."**
Hakka stirred within him, a slow, serpentine uncoiling of attention.
***"I'll ask *why* later,"*** the ancient presence murmured, its voice reverberating through the station like distant thunder. ***"But now, tell me—how did you find this realm?"***
The Dānava's face twisted in confusion. **"This… realm?"**
Hakka's patience was a fragile thing.
***"Do not play ignorant. This world was *hidden.* Even the so-called gods could not find it. Celestial beings, cosmic wanderers—none should have been able to breach its secrecy. And yet… here you are."***
The Dānava's lips peeled back in a sneer. **"We were *summoned.* The fracture called to us. We did not seek—"**
***"Lies."***
Hakka's voice cracked like a whip. The Dānava's body *jerked,* its spine arching unnaturally as if something were peeling its mind open.
Fred watched, detached, as Hakka rifled through the demon's memories like pages in a book.
Then—
Nothing.
No answers. No grand conspiracy.
Just blind obedience to a call they didn't understand.
Hakka withdrew, displeased.
***"They know nothing."***
Fred exhaled through his nose. **"So they're just… puppets?"**
***"Less than that. Tools. Used and discarded."***
The Dānava gasped as Hakka's grip on its mind released. It shuddered, its defiance crumbling into something pathetic.
**"M-mercy…"**
Fred looked down at it. Then at the other two, still writhing silently.
His fingers twitched.
**"No."**
---
A thought.
A spark.
The three Dānavas *erupted* into black flames, their bodies crumbling into ash before they could even scream.
The air still smelled of burnt ozone and something far older—something that should not have been able to burn. The three Dānavas were gone, reduced to nothing more than a fading whisper in the wind. The fracture in reality had sealed itself the moment they died, as if it had never been there at all.
---
The girl lay unconscious on the platform, her hair still tangled from the Dānava's grip. Fred didn't wake her. Time would unfreeze soon enough, and she'd remember nothing but a strange gap in her memory—a skipped heartbeat, a missing breath.
Hakka's voice was a low hum in Fred's mind.
***"They shouldn't have been able to find this place."***
Fred glanced around the frozen metro station. "Yeah, I figured. You said even gods couldn't."
***"Not just gods. *Celestials.* Higher beings. This realm was hidden by something even *I* cannot comprehend."***
Fred exhaled, running a hand through his hair. "So how the hell did a bunch of lesser Dānavas waltz in?"
Silence. Then—
***"They were led."***
Fred's fingers twitched. "By who?"
***"That is the question."***
---
Hakka had theories, of course.
Perhaps the *Tear of Past and Future* wasn't just being used to fracture reality—perhaps it was being used to *navigate* it. To find doors that should have stayed closed.
Or perhaps someone—or something—had *let* the Dānavas in.
Neither possibility sat well with Fred.
But Hakka's frustration was palpable.
***"This realm was a secret even from me. I only knew of it because I was already inside it when I awoke. And now…"***
Now, something was prying it open.
---
Fred didn't linger.
With a thought, he was airborne again, the frozen city of Shanghai stretching below him like a diorama.
Hakka's presence coiled tighter, a serpent ready to strike.
***"Where next?"*** Fred asked.
***"Follow the echoes. They will lead us to the next breach."***
Fred smirked. "And the next batch of idiots to incinerate."
Hakka's amusement was a dark thing.
***"Precisely."***
---
Half a world away, in a dimly lit U.S. military command center, officers scrambled.
Radar screens flickered, alarms blared.
*"It's stopped—somewhere in northern Mexico!"*
*"What the hell is that signature? It's not a plane, not a missile—"*
*"Sir, we're getting reports from every tracking station. That thing was moving at *light speed* before it just—*stopped.*"*
Silence. Then—
*"Get me the President."*
---
The desert air shimmered with unnatural heat as Fred hovered above the cracked earth, his shadow stretching long beneath the midday sun. Below him, the ground itself was splitting—not just in space, but in *time.* The fracture pulsed like a living wound, edges jagged and blackened, as if reality had been clawed open by something too vast to comprehend.
Hakka's voice was a coiled thrill in Fred's mind.
***"This is no mere tear. This is a gate."***
Fred cracked his neck. "Yeah, I figured. That's not six feet."
The fracture stretched at least *forty*, maybe more—a yawning maw of distorted space, throbbing with the same wrongness they'd seen before, but magnified a hundredfold. The air around it *warped*, light bending unnaturally, as if the world itself was recoiling from whatever was about to come through.
---
Military base.
**"What the hell is that?!"**
Technicians scrambled as the anomaly streaked across continents at impossible speeds—*light-speed*—before vanishing over Mexico. Generals barked orders. Satellites recalibrated. Fighter jets were scrambled, though they all knew it was pointless.
Whatever this was, it moved faster than human technology could track, let alone intercept.
And now it had stopped.
Right where the fracture was opening.
---
Fred didn't move.
He didn't need to.
The fracture *shuddered*, then *split* with a sound like the sky being torn in half.
Out stepped—
***"Ah."*** Hakka's voice dripped with dark amusement. ***"Not just a Dānava."***
The creature that emerged was *massive.* Fifteen feet tall, its body a grotesque fusion of obsidian armor and exposed muscle, its face a nightmare of too many eyes and a jaw that unhinged like a serpent's.
But what made Fred pause wasn't its size.
It was the *crown* of jagged bone atop its head.
And the way the fracture *bowed* around it, as if afraid to touch it.
The creature's voice was a landslide of gravel and malice.
***"So. The Hidden Realm's guardians finally show themselves."***
Fred tilted his head. "Guardians? Nah. Just a guy with a really pissed-off snake in his soul."
The creature blinked. Then—
It *laughed.*
***"Then you will die faster than I thought."***
---
The Dānava Emperor had miscalculated.
It had assumed this hidden realm was defenseless—ripe for conquest. It had not expected this.
Fred disappeared for the air , and....
Fred stood before him, he snatched the artifact. He inspected it for second and shattered the artifact. The shattered remnants of the copied Tear of Past and Future crumbling to dust in his palm. Time, once frozen, now flowed normally again.
-----
Around them, the military had arrived—guns, missiles, helicopters—all useless against what was about to unfold.
Hakka's voice was a blade of ice.
***"You are not welcome here."***
Then—he acted.
With a single motion, Hakka raised his hand and dragged it downward. A thin, shimmering veil of abyssal energy rose like a curtain, sealing them in a pocket dimension. The outside world blurred, the soldiers' shouts muffled into silence.
Inside, only the Dānavas, Fred, and Hakka remained.
The Emperor snarled, gripping its massive black sword.
"You dare—?"
Hakka cut it off.
***"I will ask once. How did you find this realm?"***
The Emperor, compelled by a force greater than itself, answered unwillingly.
"We do not know. Something… draws us here."
Its clawed finger pointed—*outside the veil*—to a lone human standing among the soldiers.
"The ones who called us… their souls are tainted. Filled with something… delicious."
Hakka's eyes narrowed.
***"And the Tear? Who made it?"***
The Emperor opened its mouth—
—and then the veil shattered.
Fred's body convulsed, veins bulging black as Hakka's power overwhelmed him. The strain was too much.
Hakka exhaled in frustration.
No answers. Only more questions.
But it was enough.
Hakka had seen the truth now.
This was no accident.
This was invasion.
And it was time to end it.
Fred took a single step forward.
Time bent.
The air itself stilled, every particle of dust frozen midair.
Then—he spoke.
"The Presence of the Celestial—
—The First Step."
Silence.
The words were not spoken—they were *imposed*, etched into reality like a decree from a higher plane.
And then—
**Gravity *shifted.***
The Dānava Emperor's body *slammed* into the ground, its bones shattering under the sudden, crushing force. Its army of lesser Dānavas collapsed like puppets with cut strings, their bodies flattening under pressure that defied physics. The earth beneath them *caved*, forming a perfect, bowl-shaped crater.
Then—
A pinprick of light flickered in midair. Then it *expanded*, swirling into a vortex of pure annihilation. The Dānavas didn't even have time to scream. Their bodies were ripped apart atom by atom, their essence spiraling into the abyss. The ground beneath them *peeled away*, sand, rock, and air itself being sucked into the void.
And then—
*Silence.*
The black hole winked out of existence.
No explosion. No aftermath.
Just… *nothing.*
A perfect sphere of emptiness where the Dānavas had stood.
The veil dissipated.
The soldiers stood frozen, guns trembling in their hands, eyes wide with primal terror.
Fred exhaled, his body trembling from Hakka's power.
Hakka's voice was calm.
---
The soldiers surrounding the perimeter froze.
Their guns lowered. Their radios crackled with static.
One officer whispered into his comms:
*"What… what the *fuck* was that?"*
No one answered.
---
Fred landed softly on the edge of the crater, his hands in his pockets.
Hakka's voice was a low growl.
***"They were drawn here. By humans."***
Hakka's presence coiled like a predator sensing prey.
Fred's gaze flicked to where the Emperor had pointed—a lone figure standing at the edge of the military barricade. A man in a lab coat, his eyes hollow, his lips moving silently.
His *soul* was rotten.
Filled with something *dark.*
Something *hungry.*
His fingers twitched.
Fred cracked his neck.
"Then let's go have a *chat* with them."
Fred smiled.