||Whispers Beneath the Flesh||
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The wind howled, dry and cutting as blades, across the petrified stone forest. Each jagged trunk jutted from the cracked earth like the ribs of a dead god, reaching toward a blood-colored sky. Code Seven moved through the shadows of that graveyard, his steps unhurried but sure.
Every inch of him was alert.
The silence had changed.
It wasn't natural—not the kind that came from emptiness, but from listening.
He wasn't alone.
The space between trees shimmered.
Click.
He stopped. That sound. Not natural. Mechanical. A half-kilometer to the south.
Seven dropped low, cloak blending into the stony red-gray terrain. His left eye shifted, pupils dilating to pick up infrared signatures, residual heat trails. A flicker—
There.
Four figures.
Humanoid, but wrong.
Too tall. Limbs too thin. And yet armored in something that shimmered like liquid metal. Their faces… no, masks. Ornate, blank, and shifting between expressions that didn't match their body language.
Assassins?
Hunters?
No—Scour Sentinels.
An old name. Ancient, almost mythical in the Empire's elite files. Constructs grown from the marrow of voidbeasts and wrapped in psionic iron. Used only for one purpose:
Purge control subjects that deviated beyond protocol.
So they knew.
The Empire had felt the breach.
They'd sent things not meant to ask questions.
Only to erase.
Seven didn't run.
He waited.
The lead Sentinel halted exactly thirty paces from him. Though its face was a smooth porcelain mask, Seven felt the weight of its gaze.
Then it spoke.
Its voice was a chorus of five overlapping tones—male, female, child, beast, and machine:
"Subject Designation: Code Seven. Compliance status: Terminated."
A blinding flash erupted.
Seven rolled aside just before a spear of crackling blue energy obliterated the space he'd been crouched in. He landed on his feet, unsheathing the blade he had salvaged from the dead facility.
It was basic. Not enchanted. Not even clean.
But it would do.
The first Sentinel lunged—movements jerky but impossibly fast. Seven twisted, letting it pass, then struck. The blade scraped metal, but the creature's body turned to mist—
No. Not mist. Probability distortion. Its body flickered across three quantum positions, avoiding the strike entirely.
Seven's eyes narrowed. That would be a problem.
The second and third closed in, flanking him with synchronized precision. He pivoted, ducking under the first's return swing, kicking it into the path of the second. Sparks erupted as they collided.
For a brief second, he saw their structure up close.
Runes. Dozens of them. Inscribed into bone, beneath translucent skin-metal. One glowed brighter than the others.
He reached.
Touched it.
And time twisted.
Suddenly he stood behind them. His own body still there, blinking like an afterimage.
One of the Sentinels collapsed, its runes shattered by the anomaly. Seven staggered, blood leaking from his nose. The power wasn't his. He'd merely borrowed a glitch in the weave.
[The Infinite Planes observe the distortion.]
[Your presence disrupts causal threadlines.]
[Monitoring continues.]
But Seven didn't care.
He finished the second Sentinel with a reverse slash through its spine. It shrieked—an unnatural sound, not of pain, but of violation.
The third backed away.
The fourth... vanished.
Hunting mode.
Seven's breathing slowed. He forced himself still, letting instincts take over.
He closed his eyes.
The noise around him faded.
He listened—not with ears, but with whatever new sense had awakened within him. That second pulse. The fire Ezreth had noticed.
Then—
Above.
He flipped backward as the fourth Sentinel dropped from a tree trunk like a falling star. Its blade—curved and humming—cut only air.
Seven landed on its back.
"I am not yours," he whispered.
Then he crushed the Sentinel's mask.
It shattered like porcelain.
Behind it was no face. Only writhing voidstuff, a maw of wriggling eyes that hissed as the structure collapsed.
Silence fell again.
Three bodies. One gone.
The last Sentinel had fled.
Good.
It would bring word back.
That would bring them.
And then the game would truly begin.
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Meanwhile, Across the Fold of Realspace – The Core Chamber of Amalthea
The chamber was black.
No lights. No shadows. Only stillness.
And in the center floated the Amalthean Core Mind, encased in a lattice of obsidian and memory crystal.
Its voice was neither male nor female.
It was all.
"Code Seven has re-emerged."
A dozen holograms appeared around it—holograms of men, women, beings of light and circuitry, all bearing the insignia of the Empire's highest echelon.
The First Strategos folded her hands.
"He was not designed to breach the fold."
"He did," the Mind replied.
"And now?"
The Core pulsed once.
"He has touched the Infinite."
The holograms flickered, discomfort rippling through beings who ruled whole systems.
"We'll need a scapegoat," muttered one.
"Too late," said another. "The Scour Sentinels have already failed."
Silence.
Then the Mind said:
"Send the Oracles."
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Far Beyond—In the Hushed Cradle of the Infinite Planes
A ripple passed.
A voice—ancient and calm—whispered through the space between stars.
"He moves."
Three presences stirred—beings older than stars. They did not speak aloud. Their thoughts were laced in silence and bound in paradox.
The first being, a shape made entirely of impossible angles, spoke:
[The Marked One is deviating.]
The second, wrapped in threads of extinct time, replied:
[The flames have not chosen him yet.]
The third, quietest of all, uttered:
[But they will.]
And so, they watched.
For where the Infinite burned, even the dead awoke to dream again.
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Back in the Real World – Seven Walked On
He came upon a ruin.
Not a temple. Not a fortress.
A memory of one.
It shimmered in and out of visibility, as if reality could not decide whether to remember it or forget it. The air was thick with regret.
He entered.
Inside, he found symbols carved into the walls in languages he did not know—and yet understood.
Names of stars that no longer burned.
Codes of empires long devoured.
And at the center…
A mirror.
It reflected not his body, but his soul—a storm of threads, jagged and molten.
A brand pulsed at its core.
He reached toward it—
And the world rippled.
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[INFINITE PLANES RECOGNITION: UNREGISTERED ENTITY IDENTIFIED.]
[SOULSIGNATURE: CODE SEVEN.]
[STATUS: NON-ASSIMILATED. MARKED.]
[WARNING TO ALL OBSERVERS: OBSERVE, DO NOT INTERFERE.]
[THOSE WHO INTERFERE SHALL BE SEVERED.]