Divine Milking System

Chapter 404: 404 | What the Light Spat Out

Not gradually. Not the slow chromatic shift that FGRA training materials described for standard destabilization events.

One frame it was absolute black. The next frame it pulsed with white-gold light so intense that Vanessa’s camera operator stumbled backward and nearly dropped the rig. The floodlights that had been pouring useless illumination into the void suddenly had competition.

The tear in reality went from swallowing light to producing it, the edges rippling with energy patterns that reminded Vanessa of a heartbeat rendered in electromagnetic radiation.

Reina’s hand went to her earpiece. Her body shifted from interview stance to combat readiness in less than a second.

"All units, the gate signature is changing. I want barrier teams forward. Ranged units on the ridge. Medical, get those gurneys up here now."

The perimeter erupted into controlled chaos. Soldiers and hunters moved with the kind of rehearsed urgency that came from running breach drills until the muscle memory became second nature.

Vanessa’s camera operator found his footing and aimed the lens at the gate, which continued pulsing faster, brighter, the golden-white light now spilling across the clearing in waves that made the military vehicles cast long shadows toward the tree line.

"Something’s coming through," Reina said, not to Vanessa. Not to the camera. To herself, to the universe, to whatever god she prayed to when things went sideways.

The surface of the gate bulged outward.

It wasn’t like something punching through from the other side. That would have been violent, predictable, the kind of thing you could brace for. This was different.

Reality itself was stretching. Testing its own limits. Trying to remember what it was supposed to look like before someone tore a hole in it and left the wound open.

The gold-white light concentrated at a single point near the base of the tear. It grew brighter with each pulse, each heartbeat of dimensional energy folding back on itself. Bright enough now that looking directly at it left afterimages floating in Vanessa’s vision, bright enough that she had to squint even with the camera between her and the source.

Her eyes watered. She blinked, looked away for half a second to give her retinas a break. When she looked back the light had spread, no longer just a point but a corona radiating outward from where the bulge pressed hardest against the membrane between here and there.

A shape pushed through.

Vanessa’s breath stopped.

A person lurched through the light. Small, lean, stumbling forward on legs that couldn’t decide if they still knew how to support weight.

The figure caught herself on hands and knees at the edge of the threshold, fingers digging into packed dirt that must have felt like the most solid thing in the universe after however many hours inside that fracture space.

She looked up. Female. Japanese features framed by chin-length black hair sticky with blood and something gray that might have been ash or bone dust or both.

The uniform, what scraps still clung to her frame, showed heat-warped edges where Obsidian House trim used to be.

A second figure followed. Male, tall, dark-skinned, moving like he was trying to remember what walking looked like.

A short sword hung across his back. Blood ran freely from both ears, painting dark trails down his jaw. He made it two steps past the gate before his legs gave up entirely and he sat down hard in the dirt. Didn’t speak.

Didn’t acknowledge the soldiers or the cameras or the existence of anything beyond the ground beneath him. Just sat.

A third figure emerged carrying a fourth. Female, shorter but built like someone who’d spent years hauling farm equipment or fighting older siblings for food. Her lime green hair stood out even under the layer of filth and sweat coating every visible inch of her. She had someone slung over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry—a male with dark hair who hung limp and unresponsive.

She deposited the unconscious body on the nearest flat surface and immediately signaled for medical, her hands moving in crisp semaphore that the response team recognized instantly.

Then two more. A boy with messy brown hair and wide eyes clutching a singed notebook to his chest like a holy relic, supporting a taller boy whose left arm hung at an angle that made Vanessa’s stomach turn. The tall boy’s blonde hair was matted red on one side.

Seven out of ten. Seven students walking or being carried out of a gate that should have killed every single one of them.

The medical teams rushed forward. Gurneys appeared. Voices overlapped, calling for IV lines and mana stabilizers and healing ability support.

Reina barked orders with the volume and authority of someone who had been waiting seventy-two hours for this exact moment and refused to let a single second of it go to waste.

Vanessa moved before her producer could tell her not to.

The red-haired girl was the one everyone recognized first. Even covered in burns that made Vanessa’s professional composure buckle, even with her tactical suit melted to her body in places that suggested damage no eighteen-year-old should survive, Blair Davenport was unmistakable.

The Davenport jaw. The Davenport posture, straight and defiant even when the person wearing it could barely stand. Ice-blue eyes that swept the exclusion zone with the specific intensity of someone cataloging threats before allowing herself to feel safe.

Blair’s left leg buckled as she crossed the threshold, and Vanessa saw the full extent of the burns covering her side for the first time on the live feed. Second degree minimum. Some of it looked worse.

The charred remains of what had once been a custom Davenport Industries combat suit worth more than most people’s annual salary hung from Blair’s frame like shed skin.

Reina reached Blair before any of the medical staff and caught her arm. "Davenport. Can you hear me?"

"I can hear fine." Blair’s voice was shredded. Raw. Like someone had taken sandpaper to her vocal cords and then asked her to gargle broken glass. "Stop touching me."

Reina released her arm.

Vanessa pushed through to the edge of the medical perimeter with her microphone and her camera operator trailing close behind. Protocol said she shouldn’t be this close. Common sense agreed.

But three days of standing outside a black gate waiting for dead kids to be confirmed had eroded her respect for protocol down to nothing.

"Miss Davenport. Vanessa Park, Channel Four. Can you tell us what happened inside the gate?"

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