East Gate District was burning.
Smoke curled through cracked skyscraper windows. Sirens screamed in the distance, too late to matter. A city bus lay overturned in the middle of the street, its roof caved in as if something had dropped on it from above.
Astra stood on the roof of a parking structure, wind flattening her hood against her face. Her eyes scanned the destruction below.
"This wasn't a terrorist attack," she murmured. "It was a field test."
She reached for the burner phone.
"Runa," she said into the encrypted line. "K-09 has been through here. Confirmed visual. He's destabilized."
The voice on the other end came through clipped but steady. "Signs of glyph surge?"
Astra's eyes tracked a pattern scorched into the pavement below—concentric symbols etched in glass-like burn marks.
"Yeah. He's burning hot. He's unleashed."
Runa was silent a moment. Then, "Engage or observe?"
Astra's gaze hardened.
"Engage."
She descended through the structure, boots silent, every nerve alive with tension.
As she reached street level, her glyph tattoos began to stir again—especially the ones tied to proximity sensors. Killgrave was close.
Very close.
Then came the noise.
A high-pitched keening, like metal shrieking against itself. It was coming from the alley two blocks over. Astra moved toward it, fast and low.
As she turned the corner, she stopped.
There he was.
Killgrave.
He stood barefoot in the center of a crater, shirtless, skin pale as bone and covered in erratic glyphs that shifted and pulsed like living scars. His eyes were solid black—no whites, no iris. Just void.
His spine was wrapped in a twisted version of the chain Astra had once carried—except his wasn't bound. His glyphs had broken free and consumed him.
He wasn't a man anymore.
He was a walking, unstable cipher.
And he saw her.
"You," he rasped, voice layered like multiple channels speaking at once. "The Sister. The Unlocked One."
Astra stepped forward, hands raised—but not in surrender.
"Killgrave," she said calmly. "You don't have to let it control you."
He tilted his head, birdlike. "I'm not controlled. I am control. I see the lattice. I hear the silence between glyphs. You still walk with rules. I don't."
His feet lifted an inch from the ground.
The symbols across his chest began to glow crimson.
Astra's skin tingled—her own glyphs responding.
Killgrave grinned, teeth too white. "Let's see what rules we can break."
He struck first.
A blast of energy ripped through the street, fracturing concrete and hurling cars aside. Astra dove behind a fire hydrant, rolled, and threw up her hand.
Her left arm lit up—🜄, the water glyph.
From the air, moisture condensed, forming a shimmering shield that absorbed the next wave of kinetic force.
Killgrave hovered above her, laughing. "Oh, Echo. Still using the pretty names."
"I'm not Echo anymore," Astra growled.
She activated the ⚛︎ glyph—memory recursion—and felt her reflexes sharpen, her awareness multiply.
He descended like a meteor.
She met him midair.
They clashed in a blur of motion and light.
Her fists were wrapped in glyph fire; his body was raw power, unstable and wild. Each blow he struck shattered the air. Each counter from her forced him back—but only slightly.
He wasn't just strong.
He was built to fight her.
And he was winning.
"Why did you leave us?" Killgrave snarled as he slammed her into a wall. "You were like me. You could have ruled the project."
"I didn't want to rule it," Astra spat blood. "I wanted to end it."
"Why?" His eyes flickered with something almost human. "They made us. Improved us."
"They stole us," Astra shouted. "Turned us into machines. Experiments."
"And you're better than me now?" He lifted her by the throat. "You think you're free?"
Astra's eyes burned. "No."
She reached down—and activated the recursion glyph again, pushing it to its limit.
The world slowed.
Time fractured.
In her mind, she saw the future three seconds ahead—Killgrave's next move, his mistake, his overconfidence.
She ducked under his grip and drove her elbow into his gut, then kicked his knee sideways. As he stumbled, she touched the ∞ glyph at her back.
"Override," she whispered. "Initiate recursion-lock pattern Aegis."
Her tattoos burned white-hot.
A lattice of glyphs spun outward from her, encasing her in protective light.
Killgrave screamed as he struck it—and for the first time, he faltered.
His glyphs flickered.
He fell to his knees.
Astra stood over him, breath ragged.
"You were never the enemy," she said. "They made you into one."
He looked up, his eyes beginning to clear. "They made us both."
She hesitated. The rage in him was still alive—but buried under it, she saw a fragment of the boy he once was. A failed prototype who was never given a choice.
"I can help you," she said.
Killgrave laughed bitterly. "It's too late for help."
And then his glyphs began to implode.
Astra's eyes widened.
"Self-destruct pattern," she whispered. "They hardcoded it into him."
Killgrave looked up at her, strangely peaceful.
"Tell them," he said, as the light engulfed him. "We remember."
Then he was gone.
The blast was contained, compressed inward. A silent collapse.
Astra stood there long after the smoke cleared.
She had fought him. Won. And still—it felt like a loss.
Not just of a life.
But of what could've been.
Back at the safehouse, Marlow watched as she stepped in, bloodied but alive.
She tossed a charred glyph fragment onto the table.
"Killgrave's dead," she said.
Marlow stared at it. "And you?"
"Awake," she said. "And angry."
She pulled out the next file on the Null board.
Another name.
Another broken weapon.
"Vos has more of us out there," Astra said. "And I think it's time they remembered who turned us into ghosts."