Chapter 19: The Table of the Invisible

3:42 AM. The sky above Elidora shivered like a cracked tablecloth of ether. Dana, alone on the hospital roof, spoke in a language older than light. Golden circles opened in the void, and breaths of lightning responded. Then came the heavy, sovereign footsteps of Zeus, Odin, and Thor, each dressed simply, each charged with ancient power. They needed no thrones to impose their presence. Odin, the first, stepped forward. "You have called us, my red daughter?" "It's not a call," Dana said, her arms crossed. "It's a warning." She raised her hand; the wind stopped. She told them everything: the fugitive, the Fracture-7 prison, the visions of a being that eats the multiverse, piece by piece. A monster or a principle, she didn't know, but it existed. "I looked it in the eyes," she said. "It told the truth, or what it believed to be true." Zeus stared at her. "Why not warn all of Olympus?" "Because this world is unaware of the multiverse," Dana replied. "And a whisper that is too loud can become a prophecy." A silver spiral split the sky; time itself seemed to bend. And then Taar-Nel, supreme chief of the Temporal Police, appeared. His face was ageless, his uniform vibrating in unison with laws that no reality truly contains. His gaze crossed millennia without wavering. "I salute the forces of myth and the Source of Speed," he said. "Docteure Noctielle, or should I say Red Goddess?" Dana did not smile. "Fracture-7 is it compromised?" Taar-Nel closed his eyes, then nodded. "Yes. And what the fugitive saw was not an illusion. Something is eating the threads a being or an unnameable, unclassifiable force. And it always starts with the worlds that refuse to believe they are a part of it." Thor clenched his fists. Odin remained silent, but the air around him condensed. Zeus stepped forward, arms crossed. "If it reaches this world" "This world will be ready," Dana replied, calm. "You want to fight a calamity with a white coat?" Thor scoffed. She slowly unfastened her coat. Beneath it, a pulsating red glow, split by living lines an arc of pure speed ran along her spine. RedSpeed, the Goddess of a Thousand Races, the Slayer of Silent Disasters. "If I have to do it alone, I will. But I have never been alone." Odin slowly nodded. "We will follow you. And when the time comes, we will run at your side."

End of Chapter 19: The Table of the Invisible