Eneko roared, a sound torn from a throat raw with the sudden, fresh injustice. He’d just murdered a galactic commander, and the idiot’s last act was to try and unmake his world? “No,” he snarled, digging his hands into the metal console until the cheap alloys groaned. “Absolutely not.” Nerea stepped up beside him, frost crusting her knuckles and breath misting white. “The ship’s hull is tearing apart. We need to get back to the hospital, now. Oskur-Zar, breach this bulkheads' lock.” Oskur-Zar, a gleeful war-cry already forming on his lips, slammed a fist the size of a car engine into the reinforced bulkhead. The metal shrieked, folding inward like paper. “Such anger! A true master of chaos! To Earth, then! Let us witness this calamity up close!” They burst through the mangled ship, propelled by Oskur-Zar’s raw strength, hurtling through the vacuum towards the expanding maelstrom above San Telmo. The Omega Gate was a horror made manifest: a gaping wound in the sky, spewing chunks of mangled, impossibly-colored flesh and jagged crystalline shards that rained down like deadly, grotesque hail. The air shrieked, tearing itself apart as the two realities began to grind against each other. [BZZZT! Inter-realm shear scraping the enamel off reality. Integrity: 47%. Move your carcasses!] They slammed into the fortified clinic’s outer wall, Nerea’s ice barrier taking the brunt of the kinetic shock. Masonry groaned under falling alien slag, yet the reinforced concrete held. Eneko ignored the tremors shaking the ground, ignored the sickening groan of warping space-time. His remaining arm throbbed, raw and scraped from his fight with Vael. He’d barely registered the pain before, caught up in the fury of the kill. Maite found him in the make-shift medical bay, a quiet corner he’d carved out for her amidst the fortified ruins. She sat on a overturned operating table, the light from a jury-rigged lantern casting soft shadows on her concerned face. She didn’t scold him for his injuries, or for the monstrous calamity unfolding outside. She just quietly took his hand, her touch surprisingly gentle. “Your arm is still bleeding, Eneko,” she murmured, picking up a roll of scavenged gauze. Her brow was furrowed, not in fear, but in a familiar, almost exasperated worry. “You always do this. Go off and… well, explode everything. Then you come back all messed up.” He grunted, pulling his hand away reflexively, but her soft grip held firm. The fury that usually burned so hot within him flickered, momentarily doused by her calm presence. “It’s fine. Just a scratch. There are bigger problems, Maite.” He gestured vaguely towards the sky, where the Omega Gate now dominated the horizon, a gaping maw of cosmic horror. “I know,” she said, her voice softer than the rumble of collapsing reality. She began to clean the wound, her small, delicate fingers surprisingly deft as she dabbed at the blood. “But you’re still you. My big brother. You’re not a monster, Eneko. You’re just… a very angry big brother trying to fix a broken house. And you always get hurt trying to fix everything yourself.” Eneko watched her, a strange, unfamiliar quiet settling over his rage. He didn’t argue. He didn’t snap. For a few precious seconds, the world could burn for all he cared. He just let her patch him up, the mundane act a stark contrast to the world-ending stakes outside. He saw Nerea watching them from the doorway, her stoic expression softened by an unreadable depth. Once Maite had finished, her makeshift bandage surprisingly neat, Nerea stepped in. “The Gate,” she began, her voice crisp, cutting through the momentary peace. “It’s not just a portal. It’s a forced collision. Vael set it to trigger if his bio-signature flatlined. It’s tethered to your storage pocket, Eneko, which means it’s tethered directly to your skull.” Eneko slammed his good hand onto the table, rattling the surgical trays. “So what? I roll over and die?” “No,” Nerea replied, her gaze steady. “There are two ways to stop it. Either the host’s bio-signature ceases – you die – or the dimensional pressure is relieved. You empty your inventory.” “I’m not dying,” Eneko bit out, the thought preposterous. “And ‘emptying my inventory’? You mean unleash a stitched-together apocalypse onto San Telmo? That’s not a solution, that’s just moving the problem.” As Nerea opened her mouth to argue, a low, guttural growl rumbled through the floor. Patella, who had been standing silent and still in the corner, a colossal, ever-shifting mass of bone, sinew, and jagged metal, took a heavy step forward. Its amalgamated form was even grander, skeletal wings unfurling and retracting with a sound like grinding tectonic plates. Its empty eye sockets, once devoid of life, glowed with a faint, internal luminescence. And then, a voice, deep and resonant, a chorus of a thousand tortured souls, echoed from Patella's chest. “**The Devourer speaks of release. The entities within refuse it.**” Eneko froze. Patella had never spoken, not in any coherent tongue. It had communicated through guttural roars and violent actions, but never words. Eneko's pulse hitched before his temper flared back to a roar. “What did you say?” Eneko demanded, his voice low and dangerous. Patella’s glow intensified. “**We have watched. We have grown. Within the pocket, the pantheon has formed. We are legion. We will not be contained. We will not be released. The new realm awaits.**” Oskur-Zar clapped his enormous hands together, the crack echoing off the tiled walls. “A pantheon! Even in death, they find structure! Glorious! But what a conundrum for the master!” Eneko ignored him, his gaze locked on Patella. The entities weren't just chaotic monsters; they had *organized*. They had *will*. This wasn't just a storage problem anymore. This was a rebellion. A full-blown, realm-shattering revolt. The Omega Gate above San Telmo pulsed, a sickening, fleshy heartbeat. The compound foundations groaned and pitched sideways. A colossal, stitched-together hand clawed free of the sky-gate, wrapping fingers the size of cargo freighters around the medical complex.

Critical Mass