"What the hell have you done, Relius?!" a raspy feminine voice echoed.

Viv opened her eyes.

She has to be resuscitated!, she simultaneously heard a high-pitched elderly man exclaim.

"What..." she heard in a deep-voiced baritone. "I have done what we can all agree is the responsible reaction to this... existential threat."

"Help..." Viv begged, watching blood soak onto the floor.

"She wasn't even built to kill us, you lunatic!" the woman responded.

"Weren't you the one who said you would maintain world stability by any means necessary?!" the man demanded.

"I..." the lady protested with doubt. "Dad, you're used to neutralizing these threats. How do we sever her power from her without killing her?!"

"Sorry, but it seems this time the power is her," a gruff but small black and yellow country-voiced silhouette pointing 2 swords at her echoed.

"No... stop STOP STOP!" Viv screamed as the swords cut her into three pieces. "AGH!"

She fell to the floor and, eyes descending, caught sight of her red chest sigil.

Immediately screaming, "This is all this DEVIL MARK'S fault," she reached for her chest, desperately trying to tear it off—and threw out a 15mm-wide slab of metal, and some bleeding bones alongside it.

"IT'S GETTING THICKER!" the silhouette exclaimed. "RUN!"

"This is just like a Black Beast!" the lady replied, panicked. "But Gravity doesn't work on it!"

"That's because," the deep-voiced man explained, "She's capable of inverting all entropy that afflicts her and already inherently self-modifying. She has complete and utter control of all seithr."

"Then why don't you stop this?!" the lady asked Viv as she mopped the floor with tears of blood.

"I..."

The lab—a different lab—began shaking with a violent tremor.

"An earthquake?!" the hooded man, up to his neck in black sludge, asked.

"No. This... is the Azure Heartbeat." the baritone replied.

A thrumming sound of screaming gradually became audible.

Hey! I can stabilize you! Viv heard a cordial but angry voice tell her, in her head.

Do it... she coughed, or I'll die from this pain...

The screaming loudened.

My mind is now a part of your mind! she heard, permitting an overflow of silence.

And with that peace, a memory of a book ebbed into her mind. "Look: he is coming on the clouds; and every eye will see him, as well as those who pierced him; and all the people of the Earth will wail because of him."

And then their consciousness faded to darkness.