Grid: Omnipotence Series

Issue #4: In The Shadows

"Always."

The ground beneath them groaned. Black metal bloomed where stone had been. The sky tore white, wires dangling like veins.

They stepped forward—and the world inverted.

The stronghold was gone. The plain stretched endless. The Grid had them now.

And waiting, crouched in the distance, was a figure draped in shadow, alloy jaw glinting, mask gleaming white, crows orbiting like satellites.

Remnant.

His voice carried across the impossible floor:

"Finally. The prey steps where it cannot run."

——-

Chapter 24 — The Step Into the Grid

Stone became shine; air became glare.

One stride from the tram frame and the world inverted—an endless black metallic plain reflecting them like oil, a white sky too bright to bear, and from it a fall of wires that swayed without wind. Nocturnal's cloak hissed across the strange floor, Pancho's claws clicked on his pauldron, Cassiel's optics burned cobalt.

He was waiting.

Remnant Black crouched ahead: bomber jacket snapping in wind that wasn't there, half-skull mask bright as a grin, alloy jaw flexing. Crows orbited in perfect silence, their neck plaques faintly aglow with the Architect's secondary code.

"Finally," Remnant called, voice carrying as if the plain itself wanted to hear. "Shadow and flame. In the Grid, will is king. I brought a crown."

"You talk too much," Cassiel said, raising her rifle.

Remnant blurred—speed like a thought misfiring—and the plain buckled beneath the first strike.

⸻

Chapter 25 — Clash & Warp (combined)

Impact rang like a bell through steel.

Nocturnal met him mid-rush—titanium blade to cyber claws—and shockwaves rippled out in concentric rings across the plain, making the hanging wires thrash. Cassiel's first volley cratered Remnant's mask at the temple, shaving white alloy, but he only pivoted, ripped a slab of the floor up, and hurled it like a spear. She rolled; the slab clipped a wire that fell, writhing, spitting static like a live vein.

Pancho sprang, micro-exo crackling. "Anchors—now!"

Cassiel spiked a hook etched with her memory chip into the floor; its pulse ran up her arms and pinned her in herself. Nocturnal drove his own anchor deep—heat in the tether, a gravity against invention. Remnant laughed, stepped through a fold of shade, and reappeared behind them.

"Chains for little minds," he purred—and swung.

Blade met claw again, sparks waterfalling. Then the Grid changed.

The black floor convulsed into a hollowed Outer Markets: stalls warped, watchfires burning cold, walls graffitied with a thousand repeats of the half-skull over a crow's wing. The crows dove as code—feathers fragmenting into numbers, reassembling as they curved back around. Remnant's arms unfurled into an arsenal—hooks, cannons, serrated edges—and he slammed both braced limbs down. The false street narrowed, folding like paper until Cassiel and Nocturnal were shoulder to shoulder.

"You brought knives," Remnant said. "I brought creation."

Nocturnal drove his sword into a collapsing stall—an explosion of static. For a heartbeat the fake market flickered, exposing black steel beneath. Remnant forced it back with a grunt, world tightening again.