The first explosion interrupted morning announcements.

  Not metaphorically. Literally.

  The classroom shook as a deep, concussive boom rolled through the air. Windows rattled violently. A few students screamed. The teacher froze mid sentence, the chalk snapping in half as it slipped from her fingers.

  For a moment, no one understood what had happened.

  Then every phone in the room buzzed at once.

  Emergency alerts. Breaking news. Live footage already spreading faster than panic.

  I looked down at my screen.

  Smoke climbed into the sky in thick, oily columns. A familiar part of the city reduced to rubble, concrete torn apart as if it were paper. Fire trucks and police cars looked like toys from above, scattered and useless.

  At the center of the destruction stood several figures.

  Unharmed. Unmoving.

  Surrounded by devastation they clearly hadn’t struggled to cause.

  The headline refreshed.

  UNIDENTIFIED INDIVIDUALS CAUSE MASSIVE DAMAGE — AUTHORITIES OVERWHELMED

  A nervous laugh broke out behind me. “This has to be fake, right? Some kind of stunt?”

  No one agreed.

  The school alarm began to wail. Teachers shouted instructions that no one listened to. Students rushed into the halls, calling parents, crying, shouting rumors over one another.

  “They didn’t hit the school,” someone said breathlessly. “Guess we’re lucky.”

  Lucky.

  That word snapped something in me.

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  They hadn’t avoided the school out of mercy. They just didn’t care. This world wasn’t their target.

  I was.

  I grabbed my bag and walked out.

  No one tried to stop me.

  Outside, the sky was already smudged with smoke. Helicopters thundered overhead. Sirens screamed endlessly, overlapping into a single, constant noise.

  Akari fell into step beside me without a word.

  “They crossed openly,” she said quietly. “That’s deliberate.”

  “I know.”

  My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it.

  They had made their presence known. Destroyed landmarks. Shattered buildings. Terrified people who had no way of fighting back.

  A warning.

  To me.

  I stopped in an empty side street and exhaled slowly.

  “I’m done,” I said.

  Akari looked at me, eyes sharp. “You’re going back.”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t hold back.”

  “No.”

  The air around us shifted.

  The world resisted as I tore open the passage between here and there, reality bending reluctantly before snapping apart. The noise vanished instantly as I stepped through.

  The magic world greeted me with tension.

  Alarms were already ringing. Mana surged wildly through the air, reacting to something vast and violent happening elsewhere. They felt it. Everyone did.

  I didn’t stop.

  I rose.

  High above the capital, where clouds twisted unnaturally and the sky darkened as if anticipating judgment, I let go.

  Completely.

  Doom answered.

  Not as a spell.

  As a presence.

  The world screamed.

  Mana collapsed inward toward me, pulled by a gravity that had nothing to do with mass. The sky blackened, not with clouds but with absence, light bending and breaking around a growing void.

  Blood poured from my nose instantly. My vision blurred. My bones felt like glass under pressure.

  I didn’t care.

  The spell expanded, not striking the ground, but the sky itself. A vast, impossible sigil burned into existence above the world, visible for hundreds of miles.

  A declaration.

  A warning.

  Every operative who had crossed worlds felt it. Every sensor overloaded. Every spell meant to hide or shield shattered like paper.

  This was not an attack.

  It was a message.

  Look at me.

  Far below, in a secured location they thought was hidden, three familiar presences felt it and froze.

  Ayame stared upward, breath caught in her throat.

  Reina dropped to her knees, hands trembling.

  Kaori laughed softly, reverently.

  “So that’s… Doom,” she whispered. “He cast it like that…”

  Awe drowned out fear.

  Back in the normal world, the intruders faltered.

  Their movements slowed. Their confidence cracked.

  They understood.

  The priority had changed.

  The void in the sky lingered just long enough to burn itself into memory, then collapsed inward, vanishing as abruptly as it had appeared.

  I fell.

  The world caught me before I hit the ground, consciousness slipping as pain finally caught up.

  But I smiled through it.

  Because now they knew.

  They could terrorize worlds.

  They could shatter cities.

  But if they wanted a war...

  They should come for me.