---
The sky was breaking.
Airi felt it before she saw it—a thin, hair-raising pressure sinking into her bones.
Something was wrong.
Not like magic. Not like mana. Not even like a curse.
Deeper.
She gasped, her vision sluggish, heavy with exhaustion. Everything hurt. She barely registered the warmth of Stalin's arms around her, cradling her weight as he hovered above the battlefield.
Below, the undead tide had frozen mid-motion.
Their frostbitten bodies slumped, heads tilting downward as if the life had been stolen from their un-life.
And beyond them—
Something waited.
Something aware.
Something old.
---
Airi forced herself to focus. Her pulse hammered, her body weak, but she needed to see.
Her gaze locked onto the ruined tower.
At first, she thought it was just another horror clawing its way out of the snow.
But then—
It shifted.
Not movement. Not teleportation.
A lapse.
Like reality itself had second-guessed whether it had already moved or not.
Its form was stretched unnaturally, jagged antlers arching toward the shattered skyline. A tapestry of scars and frostbitten sinew wrapped around its elongated limbs, and its eyes—
They watched.
They studied.
She had seen monsters. Beasts with more teeth than flesh, aberrations with too many limbs, undead things that wept from the memories they had lost.
But this?
This wasn't looking at them like prey.
It was watching like it was waiting.
---
The Battlefield Begins to Rewrite Itself
Then—
The first ripple.
The air cracked like a sheet of ice shattering over deep water.
A distortion.
Not an attack. Not a spell.
Something more foundational.
Airi's stomach lurched as the battlefield twitched.
Not movement. Not time travel.
A rollback.
Ruins that had been crumbled an instant ago were suddenly whole again. Snow that had melted refroze midair in reverse, crystals snapping back into place.
The sky flickered. The ground staggered between past and present.
She gasped, fingers digging into Stalin's sleeve.
What is happening?
Then—
The undead were gone.
Not killed. Not disintegrated.
They had never been here.
Her breath hitched.
This wasn't just reality shifting.
This was history rewriting itself.
---
Airi barely had time to process before—
The Stray spoke.
> "Entity identified: Unwritten Variable."
"Correction: Required."
The voice wasn't sound.
It was a declaration. A law.
A command embedded into the marrow of the world.
And then—
The first arrow was already flying.
No release. No motion. It simply was.
Airi flinched, her eyes unable to track it.
No trajectory. No moment of acceleration.
One instant, the arrow had not existed.
The next, it was inches from Stalin's skull.
He moved. Barely.
A fraction of a second's adjustment—enough to avoid death, but not unscathed.
A thin line of red cut across his cheekbone.
Airi's breath came in ragged gasps.
What—what was that?
Her hands trembled against Stalin's sleeve.
This wasn't speed.
This wasn't teleportation.
It was removing the concept of time itself.
Her throat clenched, nausea curling in her stomach.
This isn't mana. This isn't magic. This isn't even causality.
Then what was it?
---
Stalin's jaw tightened.
He needed the 13th crow to land.
Airi didn't understand why—didn't understand how he knew what had to be done.
But she felt it.
Something deep in her bones, in the marrow of her existence.
A sense of inevitability.
Stalin's fingers twitched.
And then—
He spoke.
Not in words. Not in sound.
But in concepts.
Yr'ath.
The Tongue of the Unfather.
Airi's vision fractured.
Pain slammed into her skull—
A wrongness so deep it felt like her mind was being pulled apart at the seams.
She gasped, clutching her head.
Her thoughts blurred—
what is happening what is happening what is happening—
And then—
A shadow.
Not Stalin.
Not the Frost Stray.
Someone else.
A figure standing just beyond her gaze, their back to her.
Familiar.
Unreachable.
Her breath hitched.
Who—?
But the moment she tried to grasp it—
It was gone.
Instead, the air rippled.
And suddenly—
A crow landed on the ruins. The 13th.
The battlefield was now a true Godscar.
And Stalin?
He was ready to erase something from history.
---
The Stray did not hesitate.
The first arrow had failed.
So it adapted.
The second arrow did not fly.
It was already in Stalin's heart.
Airi's scream ripped through the freezing air.
No impact. No sound.
No moment of recognition.
Only the undeniable fact that it had already happened.
He should have been dead.
She felt herself shatter inside—
But then—
Stalin exhaled.
His fingers twitched.
And his voice—
Empty. Distant. Absolute.
"That never happened."
For a fraction of a second—
Nothing changed.
The arrow was still buried in his chest.
Airi could see it. Could feel it.
And then—
Reality stuttered.
The air lurched.
And suddenly—
The arrow was back in the Frost Stray's bow.
Unfired. Unmade.
---
Airi's Mind is Unraveling
She couldn't breathe.
She couldn't understand.
Stalin had just rewritten an event out of existence.
Not reversed. Not dodged.
Removed.
Her fingers clenched, nails biting into her palms.
Her entire body screamed at her to comprehend.
She had spent years studying the fundamental rules of mana.
She had studied cause and effect.
She had studied magic as a system.
But this wasn't a system.
This was wrong.
This was something else.
Something older.
Something she wasn't supposed to see.
Her breath hitched.
Her lips parted.
She wasn't even sure she had spoken aloud.
"Stalin—"
"What…"
"What are you?"
---
Reality retaliated.
The moment Stalin erased the arrow, the world convulsed.
It was subtle at first—a whisper, a flicker, a delay in existence. A shift. An unraveling of the world's fabric.
But then, the battlefield broke.
The ruins melted. Not just stones—cathedrals, monuments, towering structures that never existed here before, memories of a past that never was. And then, they began to fold back into one another, crumbling into layers of forgotten time.
And in the center of it all—
The Frost Stray adapted.
Its eyes were fixed on Stalin, but something was different. The very air around it seemed to crackle, as though it too was rewriting the laws of reality.
It tilted its head, slow, deliberate. A quiet hum echoed between them. Then—
It whispered.
> "Correction: Initiated."
---
A pulse rippled through the battlefield, ripples in the air and reality itself as the Stray recalibrated.
Stalin's breath caught in his throat as something invisible pressed down upon him. He couldn't breathe—couldn't move.
What is this? The pressure was overwhelming, like the world was suffocating him from every side. And then, with a flicker, he was somewhere else.
A fraction of a second lost.
His position had changed, his body lagging behind the moment. Not movement—rollback. The Stray wasn't just erasing his attacks, it was erasing the very concept of his actions.
> It wasn't just erasing attacks. It was erasing his movements.
His body stiffened as the realization hit him too late.
Damn it, no.
---
Airi was still in his arms. But now, there was no comfort, only weightless horror.
They were no longer standing on the same ground. No longer touching the same reality.
Everything was suspended, floating. Frozen.
Stalin's arms were tight around her, holding her in place as the world around them distorted and snapped back into strange shapes, like a mosaic of shattered moments.
She could feel her heart hammering in her chest—pounding against the numbness that was seizing her limbs. The air around them shimmered, and she felt the pressure shift from him to her. She wasn't meant to survive this.
She twisted in his grip, desperate to see something—anything—that made sense. The snow zombies below, the ones that had been swarming like a frozen plague, were gone. The terrain was now an amorphous mess of shifting timelines. Where they had once been was now nothing but a void.
Where are they? She thought, but the thought didn't quite make it past her lips.
But Stalin wasn't speaking either, not yet. His gaze, distant as it was, remained locked on the Stray.
He's not looking at me.
Her voice was trembling now, breaking beneath the weight of the shifting world around them. "Stalin... what's happening?"
His cold eyes, still too still for comfort, flickered toward her. There was no warmth, no reassuring tone.
No answer.
For a long moment, they just hovered, suspended, as if the universe itself had folded around them. Then, the pressure eased. The world snapped.
-----
Stalin's breath hitched in that impossible moment. He couldn't see it.
The Stray had already read the map of his every move, every potential reaction.
The next arrow didn't fly from the Stray's bow, nor did it manifest from thin air. No. This arrow was already within Stalin's body—an inevitable mark, a phantom wound.
It tore through his side, but not from a physical strike. Stalin's ribs cracked—not from impact, but from something far more profound— inevitability.
His body jerked back violently, blood rushing out of the gash, his mouth open in shock, unable to heal. The wound refused to close.
The realization hit with slow, crushing weight: the arrow had already struck.
> The Stray had erased the moment he was unwounded.
---
Airi's mind cracked under the strain. This wasn't just battle anymore. This was some nightmarish rewriting of reality itself.
She watched, frozen in Stalin's arms, as the wound on his side widened, his breath ragged. Blood streamed down the side of his face, dripping onto her.
It was like watching someone die over and over.
> The Frost Stray wasn't just trying to kill Stalin. It was trying to overwrite him.
Airi gasped, horror flooding her chest. She shook, trying to focus, but the world itself was blurring.
"Stalin—!" she cried again. But his face—it was too still.
No response. His expression hadn't shifted, even though he was bleeding out. Even though everything was slipping away, he was still staring forward, locked onto the Stray.
No... he's already gone.
---
Stalin's chest ached. His thoughts scrambled, fragmented, as pain tore through him, numbing his mind.
He needed to act. But the power of the Stray was... too much.
He could feel the battle slipping through his fingers.
Then—a whisper.
> "What if… you never adapted?"
What was he saying?
The battlefield screamed as the Stray stuttered, warped, fractured.
A fraction of a second—a blink—where time itself wavered. And in that moment, the Stray lost its edge. Its body mutated backward, its mind flickering with knowledge it had just acquired, then forgetting it, as if the continuity itself was rupturing.
> It forgot how to counter him.
The Stray hesitated.
Just a second.
But that was enough. Stalin moved. Not physically, but mentally. The moment was rewritten. He wasn't just fighting for survival anymore—he was fighting the narrative itself.
> "What if you never arrived here at all?"
-------
The Stray faltered.
Its form fractured, not from physical damage, but from the concept of its existence. Time rewound. Its mutations reversed, its knowledge lost.
It was vanishing, but something was wrong. The Stray wasn't supposed to lose.
Airi gasped, her grip tightening on Stalin's arm. What was happening to them? What was happening to everything around them? The battlefield was disappearing, leaving only a blank canvas.
And then—
> "Countermeasure: Executed."
---
Stalin's First True Paradox – Reality Cannot Process Him
The air collapsed around Stalin. His body shuddered as his vision split.
For the first time—
He was in two places at once.
His memories folded over themselves—past and present battling for space. The world couldn't make sense of him anymore. It was failing.
Airi's scream broke through, but it felt distant, muted, like her voice was too far out of sync with reality. She reached for him, but he was already a flicker of contradictions—his reflection no longer matched his form.
> "Unwritten Variable: Fully Identified."
"Error: Uncorrectable."
> "Finalization: Failed."
The Stray failed to erase him. Stalin was something far more dangerous now—he wasn't just an anomaly anymore. He was the paradox.
---
The Stray Is Gone – But Stalin Has Pushed Too Far
The Frost Stray collapsed, its form vanishing into a blur. Not dead. Not defeated. Simply gone, as though it never existed.
The battlefield fell silent. No explosions. No crashes. No snow zombies.
The world had no record of the fight.
Airi's breath caught as she realized they were alone now. The snow had stopped falling.
She turned to Stalin—he was still holding her. But something in his eyes had shifted. There was nothing there. Nothing human.
The reflection staring back at her in the icy ground wasn't his.
It wasn't him anymore.
> Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.